While the rest of us grow older, Spenser seems suspended in perpetual early middle age. Oh, he talks about getting older, but his body is still firm, his muscles toned, and his reflexes are still hair-trigger fine. Even so, it is Spenser's body that betrays him when he is almost killed by an assassin's bullet two-thirds of the way through Robert B. Parker's latest Spenser adventure, Small Vices. Hired to discover the truth behind a four-year-old murder, Spenser soon runs afoul of "the Gray Man," who eventually shoots and partially paralyzes him. Spenser, his stalwart girlfriend Susan, and his almost mythical friend Hawk then hole up in Santa Barbara until the detective can get back on his feet again. There's never any doubt that Spenser will get back on his feet, or that he will eventually track down the man who shot him and solve the mystery that started the whole ball rolling in the first place. What makes the Spenser mysteries interesting is Spenser himself, the thinking person's private eye, a man of honor and of conscience who understands that every action has consequences.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
Robert B. Parker is a tough act to follow--especially for Robert B. Parker. Now that he's written more than 20 crime novels that pretty much set the standard for the private eye mystery, what's left? . . . In Small Vices Mr. Parker not only brings his hero to the point of death but challenges him to confront his own mortality in a way that he hasn't since Valediction (1984).


From AudioFile
Using actors to read books sometimes leads to inspiring performances. Sometimes not. Burt Reynolds' reading of the new Spenser mystery is an example of the latter. He swallows words; uses a low, at times, barely audible voice to convey seductiveness; and his characters can be indistinguishable and/or unintelligible. Reynolds has a gravelly, smoky voice that ordinarily would lend itself well to the genre, but he doesn't seem prepared for the text. Key words are underemphasized, and some sentences seem to go on forever. The awful music leading into and out of chapters is also distracting. For all the corruption, cover-ups and assassination attempts in the book, it's a shame that Spenser's most formidable foe is the narrator. R.I.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Maybe you've drifted away from the Spenser series, now in its twenty-fifth installment, and started paying more attention to the younger fellows--Hiaasen, Mosley, and countless others. Well, it might be a good time to check back in with Parker, who can still sling similes with the best of them. This time the inimitable if aging Spenser (he's a Korean War vet!) shows definite signs of losing a step--he's shot, nearly killed, and must undergo a grueling rehabilitation before tracking down his assassin for round two. Along the way, he investigates the wrongful conviction of a Boston gangbanger who was framed for the murder of a rich college girl. Spenser and longtime lover Susan are still trading quips about relationships, sex, and, this time, adopting a baby, and Spenser and even-longertime pal Hawk are still exchanging knowing nods and meaningful monosyllables as if they were Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway. What is it about Spenser and his pals that makes it hard to stay away for long? Certainly, it's not realism. We love the dialogue, but clearly nobody talks that way--we're not tough enough, quick enough, and we certainly can't spout literary allusions well enough. But if we were quick enough, it sure would be fun to talk like Spenser and to hang out with Hawk and Susan, and, let's face it, it might also be fun to beat up the bad guys in our lives every now and then. Spenser lives in the real world and deals with it the way we imagine we would if only we knew how. Hemingway called it grace under pressure, and smirk though we may, it still feels good, even just to read about. Bill Ott


From Kirkus Reviews
Peerless shamus Spenser's 24th case (Chance, 1996, etc.) is almost his last, thanks to an assassin who's a lot more like him than he'd like to acknowledge. Cone, Oakes and Baldwin, Boston's largest law firm, doesn't like loose ends, and when Rita Fiore and Marcy Vance, the former prosecutor who put Ellis Alves away for murder and the former public defender who couldn't save him from the big house, meet in the firm's tony corridors and share doubts about the case, they end up hiring Spenser to make sure the evidence is solid. Nobody, including Alves, a career criminal with an attitude about white folks, wants to talk to Spenser, but it isn't long before he smells several rats anyway. Why didn't the upscale couple (since married) who said they saw Alves drag Pemberton College coed Melissa Henderson into his car call the police till after Melissa was dead? Why would a lowlife like Alves have dumped her body on the well-tended Pemberton campus? Why do the parents of Melissa's boyfriend, tennis hopeful Clint, deny that they ever knew Melissa? Interesting questions--interesting enough to get Spenser the obligatory string of warnings by local thugs and crooked cops and a dead-eyed killer in a gray suit. But Spenser won't lay off, even though his personal shrink Susan Richman, avid to adopt a baby, switches to reminders that Ellis Alves undoubtedly belongs in jail for something. So the Gray Man comes after Spenser with his trademark .22, short-circuiting every surprise (hey, this isn't Nicolas Freeling) except the question of how Spenser's going to recover and nail his would-be executioner and the people who hired him--and then live with himself afterwards. It's a tribute to Parker's professionalism that he takes a device as old as Sherlock Holmes--the death and rebirth of the detective--and infuses it with renewed urgency and moral weight, showing the thoroughbred form that put him and Boston on the p.i. map in the first place. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Ellis Alves is no angel. But his lawyer says he was framed for the murder of college student Melissa Henderson...and asks Spenser for help.

From Boston's back streets to Manhattan's elite, Spenser and Hawk search for suspects, including Melissa's rich-kid, tennis-star boyfriend. But when a man with a .22 puts Spenser in a coma, the hope for justice may die with him...

* A New York Times bestseller
* Fantastic reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Chicago Tribune, and many more
* A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection
* Parker's newest hardcover, Night Passages, will be on sale from G.P. Putnam's Sons September 22nd.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
April 1997

Spenser is back. In Small Vices, his 24th adventure, we find the private eye working on a case of wrongful incarceration — a case that reopens the murder of a Boston coed. Spenser's cynical and pushy nature gets him what he wants, when he wants it, but it gets under people's skin. Despite being threatened, he doesn't drop the case; Spenser is a man of principle and a man set in his ways. Suddenly we see Spenser as we have never seen him before: near death, having taken three bullets from a hired assassin. Most men would give up, but who ever said that Spenser was like most men?

Spenser embarks on the long, hard road of rehabilitation with his friend, Hawk, and his lover, Susan, by his side. And from the start his mind is set on one thing: regaining the strength and skill to take on the would-be assassin face to face, man to man, until justice is done. Spenser has never come up against something quite like this — a professional killer who just might be his equal...and then some.

ANNOTATION

Spenser dies--and lives to tell the tale--in Parker's stunning new mystery novel. In an attempt to smoke out a killer, Spenser plays dead after he barely survives a master assassin's bullet. For it is only then that he can see justice done--and let the shooter know that it's payback time. BOMC Main Selection. 320 pp. 150,000 print.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Ellis Alves is a bad kid from the 'hood with a long, long record, but did he really murder Melissa Henderson, a white coed from ritzy Pemberton College? Alves's former lawyers think he was framed, and they hire Spenser to uncover the truth. As he and longtime associate Hawk race from the back streets of Boston to Manhattan's most elegant avenues, Spenser gets a postgraduate course in the seamy side of life - an ethical no-man's-land where twisted cops and spoiled rich kids with peculiar private proclivities are just the tip of the iceberg. The stakes abruptly shift from corruption to catastrophe when a master assassin's bullets take Spenser down. He survives the attack - barely - but must play dead to the world, while recovering his strength hiding in secret. Only then can he see justice done - and let the shooter know that it's payback time.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Spenser returns in top form (his 24th adventure, following Chance) to clear a man wrongly imprisoned for murdering a woman college student. Ellis Alves, a black man with sexual assaults on his record, was convicted easily when two witnesses said they saw him kidnap the victim. Former prosecutor Rita Fiore suspects a frame-up, however, and hires old pal Spenser to investigate. "You gonna get buried," Alves warns Spenser and his sidekick Hawk. Sure enough, reopening the case pits them against the victim's influential parents, her hostile tennis-star boyfriend and his wealthy family, and the state cop who arrested Alves. Four Boston thugs can't force Spenser off the case, but an imported hit man pours several bullets into him. Barely surviving, Spenser emerges from a coma with his gun hand useless. Parker writes a powerful, affecting description of Spenser's painful rehab. The sharp, densely compacted dialogue, a hallmark of this series, exceeds itself here. Even psychologist Susan Silverman's discourse, as she shrink-raps on Spenser's motivation, has a lower than usual pretense quotient. Susan wants to adopt a child with Spenser, but he is determined to risk another clash with the hit man. Spenser, still thoroughly convincing as the tough and decent PI, seeks bits of justice where he can. Even after 23 years on the job (The Godwulf Manuscript, Spenser's first appearance, was published in 1974), nobody does it better. BOMC selection (Apr.)

Kirkus Reviews

Peerless shamus Spenser's 24th case (Chance, 1996, etc.) is almost his last, thanks to an assassin who's a lot more like him than he'd like to acknowledge.

Cone, Oakes and Baldwin, Boston's largest law firm, doesn't like loose ends, and when Rita Fiore and Marcy Vance, the former prosecutor who put Ellis Alves away for murder and the former public defender who couldn't save him from the big house, meet in the firm's tony corridors and share doubts about the case, they end up hiring Spenser to make sure the evidence is solid. Nobody, including Alves, a career criminal with an attitude about white folks, wants to talk to Spenser, but it isn't long before he smells several rats anyway. Why didn't the upscale couple (since married) who said they saw Alves drag Pemberton College coed Melissa Henderson into his car call the police till after Melissa was dead? Why would a lowlife like Alves have dumped her body on the well-tended Pemberton campus? Why do the parents of Melissa's boyfriend, tennis hopeful Clint, deny that they ever knew Melissa? Interesting questions—interesting enough to get Spenser the obligatory string of warnings by local thugs and crooked cops and a dead-eyed killer in a gray suit. But Spenser won't lay off, even though his personal shrink Susan Richman, avid to adopt a baby, switches to reminders that Ellis Alves undoubtedly belongs in jail for something. So the Gray Man comes after Spenser with his trademark .22, short-circuiting every surprise (hey, this isn't Nicolas Freeling) except the question of how Spenser's going to recover and nail his would-be executioner and the people who hired him—and then live with himself afterwards.

It's a tribute to Parker's professionalism that he takes a device as old as Sherlock Holmes—the death and rebirth of the detective—and infuses it with renewed urgency and moral weight, showing the thoroughbred form that put him and Boston on the p.i. map in the first place.