Tangled Web UK Review March 2003
Back Story: A Spenser Novel by
Robert B. Parker
pbk out December 02
(No Exit Press)
at £6.99
Robert B Parker is always a delight to read, and the character of Spenser an
enviable one. How we all wish we could be as cool as Spenser when confronted by a
nervous gunman shoving a revolver in our face. Or have those hilarious one-liners and
put-downs at the tip of our tongue just at the right moment. You know exactly what you
are going to get with a Spenser novel, and once again Parker does not disappoint.
The 'back story' he is confronted with, has Spenser looking into the shooting of
Emily Gordon in a bank-raid in 1974. The perpetrators were members of a revolutionary
group calling themselves The Dread Scott Brigade. Thirty years on - or I should say
twenty-eight, as Spenser keeps reminding everyone - the mystery of who exactly killed
Emily has not been solved. In fact, no member of the group has been arrested. Now
Emily's actress daughter Daryl Gordon wants to know. Who killed her mother, an
innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The more Spenser digs, the odder the puzzle becomes. Why is the FBI
intelligence report on the gang missing? What is keeping Emily's hippie husband in
cannabis thirty – sorry Spenser, twenty-eight - years down the line. Why is a member of
the Mob so keen to deter Spenser, that he arranges to try and have him bumped off?
Enter Spenser's equally laconic sidekick Hawk, a black man with attitude vaguely from
the wrong side of the tracks. You would not want to mess with Hawk- he makes Shaft
look like a wuss. The plot thickens as a former FBI investigator on the case, now in
retirement, seems to lead Spenser into a trap. And the only identifiable member of the
Dread Scott Brigade is now living in the lap of luxury.
By twists and unexpected turns, Spenser inevitably arrives at the truth. But I will
not spoil it for you. Climb on the roller-coaster, hold on to your candy-floss, and take
that crazy ride that is the fast-paced, laconic style of Robert B Parker. You will love
every gut-wrenching corner and descent as the sharp dialogue, and taut story-telling
carries you to the hair-raising culmination of a tale you really can't put down.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
New Books by Robert B. Parker at Amazon.co.uk
Secondhand and Out of Print Books by Robert B. Parker at Alibris.com
