It's becoming abundantly clear that gifted Mr. Parker is no longer interested in devising mysteries or even much action/adventure for Boston's macho-sensitive shamus Spenser. Indeed, the three Spenser-novel elements—mystery, comedy, sentiment (i.e. what is a real man?)—have been shifting their proportions around dramatically of late, and this time it's 75% sentiment, 25% comedy. . . and just about zilch in the detection department. Still, Parker is sincere and skillful enough to make his rather smug scenario here—an alienated teenage boy's coming-of-age, thanks to Spenser's sterling tutelage—intermittently heartwarming. The boy is shrugging, sluggish, TV-addicted Paul Giacomon, 15-year-old victim of the post-divorce hostilities between his shady-dealing father and his sex-hungry mother. Originally hired to rescue and then protect kidnapped Paul from the father (who doesn't really want the kid), Spenser is soon convinced that both parents "are shit," with no interest in the boy; and so begins Paul's "early autumn"—a crash course, up in the Maine wilderness, in how to be "autonomous." Bodybuilding, reading (no TV), music, how to make choices, how to dress, what to eat: soon Paul is improving terrifically (though Spenser's lady Susan is hostile to the whole project at first). And when Paul's parents object to what has now become a virtual kidnapping, Spenser gets the goods on them (Dad's insurance seams, Mom's promiscuity) and blackmails them into leaving the kid alone and paying for his schooling. So, finally, Paul is really on his own—sturdy enough to get interested in ballet and go off to a ritzy prep school. True, the kidnaps and the insurance-seam investigation do involve a bit of sleuthing and violence. Otherwise, however, this is basically a father-substitute-and-son concoction that's closer to Kramer vs. Kramer than The Maltese Falcon—disappointing for mystery lovers, nice enough (with a fair number of well-earned laughs along the way) for those tolerant of Parker's particular brand of tough-guy treacle.
Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1980
ISBN: 0440122147
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1980
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the...
Just when you thought you’d seen a detective in every guise imaginable, here comes one in sheep’s clothing.
For years, George Glenn hasn’t been close to anyone but his sheep. Everyday he lets them out, pastures them, reads to them and brings them safely back home to his barn in the guilelessly named Irish village of Glennkill. Now George lies dead, pinned to the ground by a spade. Although his flock haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing, they’re determined to bring his killer to justice. There are of course several obstacles, and debut novelist Swann deals with them in appealingly matter-of-fact terms. Sheep can’t talk to people; they can only listen in on conversations between George’s widow Kate and Bible-basher Beth Jameson. Not even the smartest of them, Othello, Miss Maple (!) and Mopple the Whale, can understand much of what the neighborhood priest is talking about, except that his name is evidently God. They’re afraid to confront suspects like butcher Abraham Rackham and Gabriel O’Rourke, the Gaelic-speaking charmer who’s raising a flock for slaughter. And even after a series of providential discoveries and brainwaves reveals the answer to the riddle, they don’t know how to tell the Glennkill citizenry.
All these problems are handsomely solved at the unsurprising cost of making the human characters less interesting than the sheep. But the sustained tone of straight-faced wonderment is magical.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52111-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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