fajrdrako | Bad Business...

Every time I read a new Robert B. Parker novel, I find myself musing over it and wanting to discuss it.

Many Robert B. Parker fans think the books aren't as good as they used to be - as if they had become parodies of his own writing. While I can see some truth to that, I enjoyed the last two, Widows's Walk and Back Story very much indeed, and thought they were not so much parodies of the Spenser formula as a certain style of writing pared closer and closer to its essence.

Maybe that was true of Bad Business too. For the record, I enjoyed it, but I noticed that this time I wasn't laughing out loud at the witticisms or grinning over Hawk's scenes. Perhaps because there was nothing new here? In fact, for the first time ever, I came to a scene where Spenser is making jokes at the expense of a rich, stupid and snobbish floozie, who says to him, "You aren't so funny," and I almost agreed with her. What makes Spenser less funny than he used to be?

I did have a few favourite lines. One was when brawny, tough but literary Spenser asks his lover, Susan Silverman, who he resembles, and she promptly answers: "John Keats." Now, that was funny. Another was a conversation with Hawk, where Hawk describes two of the male suspects as lovers, even though he hasn't seen them as much as touch each other. Spenser asks how he can be sure. Hawk says, "Someone sees you with Susan, they know you're a couple. Someone sees you with me, they know we're not." Spenser's reply is something like "Thank God!" - but I chuckled, thinking of the Spenser/Hawk slash that is out there.

Another nice moment: an obnoxious TV host who advocates fee love has been giving Spenser his spiel, citing the courtly love ideals of the medieval poets. Spenser asks him if he has read Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida. Of course the man has not read it - and we don't need to be told that Spenser has. Mind you, I think Chaucer is an odd choice of poet to be cited in the context of courtly love, but of course Spencer's point had nothing to do with courtly love and everything to do with accusing the man of being a pimp in the style of Pandarus.

For lines like that, I still love Parker's writing.

But there was something stale about it. (Or my mood.) I guessed the killer about a third of the way through, and was vaguely disappointed to be correct. Too obvious. Susan Silverman seemed more and more an artificial stereotype who might be a woman in a movie poster but who bears no resemblance to any living woman I have ever met, or would want to. Spenser's adoring relationship with her seems ever more artificial as well. Yes, I know fans say he's supposed to be a knight in shining armour, metaphorically speaking, and she the lady of his desire, but the unstated poetic metaphor fails to convince me.

Parker is the last author on earth I would accuse of homophobia, but it didn't escape my notice that the only explicitly bi character in the book is a killer. I try not to be oversensitive about these things, but fictional bisexual murderers - especially when they are serial killers - are my personal pet peeve. It also seemed an odd contradiction that despite Parker's feminist philosophy, too many of the women in the book were carbon copies of each other, Stepford wives with sex and/or alcohol addictions, and the only woman who didn't fit that stereotype was someone we barely got a glimpse of.... Wait a minute, it was implied that she had a substance abuse problem. Right. That leaves our regulars, Susan Silverman and Rita Fiore, and, though they are sympathetic, most of their conversations with Spenser involved banter about sex. Hawk's girlfriend Cecile seemed to me the only convincing female character in the book.

Except of course for the dog, Pearl.