Sudden Mischief, the 25th Spenser novel, finds Robert B. Parker's seemingly ageless sleuth once again engaging Boston's bad guys and sorting out life's moral dilemmas, all (or mostly) in the name of love. When Spenser's girlfriend, psychiatrist Susan Silverman, asks him to investigate charges of sexual harassment leveled against her ex-husband, Brad Sterling, the detective agrees, though the assignment "shows every sign of not working out well." As the sexual harassment allegations melt like April snow, Sterling drops out of sight, a dead body appears in his office, and Spenser discovers a murky slush of clues that suggest Sterling's work as a marketing genius for local charities has been a front for some truly despicable criminal activities. As always, the more-than-slightly-shady Hawk is on hand to help Spenser sort the good from the bad, but Spenser is left to his own devices when it comes to making sense of the emotional havoc the case creates in his relationship with Susan. And what devices they are: emotionally mature and physically dynamic, Spenser once again proves himself as detective, friend, lover, and human being as Sterling's reappearance forces Susan to examine her past and her conscience while searching for her own autonomy. As always, Spenser endures as an intelligent, ethical, and poetic private eye, even if his endless middle age seems a bit supernatural. Parker's nimble, Spartan prose suits a character who carries his years in wisdom rather than body fat. If the heart of any truly great detective series is a truly great detective, Sudden Mischief and the rest of Parker's Spenser novels surely fit the bill.


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From Publishers Weekly
The 25th Spenser novel isn't a romance, but it's all about love. In early springtime, Susan Silverman, the elegant psychologist and lover who long ago softened the heart of Boston's preeminent thug-sized PI, asks Spenser to investigate the sexual harassment suit that has been filed against her first husband, Brad Sterling. Susan's ambivalence about Brad's predicament doesn't make the case easy for Spenser; nor does the gradually disclosed involvement of the noted Harvard Law School professor whose young wife is one of the plaintiffs. As Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, trace Brad's business dealings (he's a professional fund-raiser who's hired to run mammoth charity events), they also come up against a lawyer employed by the local organized crime crowd and some hired muscle associated with same, one of whom is found fatally shot in Brad's office. The next murder victim, a woman, turns out to be the director of a counseling service for ex-cons, which was also listed as benefiting from the most recent charity bash. What's more, the dead woman had her own connection to the still-missing Brad. Threatened repeatedly with fists and guns while coping with Susan's rare emotional uncertainty, Spenser stays the course to a resolution in which he and Susan both prevail. The mystery in this valentine may be insubstantial, but readers who pick up Parker's bestselling series for its characters and atmosphere will be delighted. BOMC main selection. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This time Spenser is in a real mess: he's agreed to help his girlfriend's ex-husband fight charges of sexual harassment, but when his client disappears, he quickly realizes that a whole lot more is at stake.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Boston Globe, Richard Dyer
As usual, what surprises most are the dimensions of the story a reader might not have expected. In this book Parker returns to the personal psychological dimensions that are more characteristic of the middle sequence of the series than the recent volumes.


From Booklist
The relationship between Spenser, Parker's ageless hero, and Susan Silverman, the sleuth's longtime lover, takes center stage in this twenty-fifth installment in the perennially best-selling series. When Susan's ex-husband, Brad, appears after a decades-long absence, nearly broke and the object of a sexual-harassment suit, Spenser reluctantly agrees to help. As he investigates the circumstances surrounding the suit, he discovers that fund-raiser Brad is swimming in very deep water: mobsters, who were using his fund-raising campaigns to launder money, have discovered he was cooking the already cooked books and aren't at all pleased. The deeper Spenser digs, the more bodies he uncovers and the more culpable Brad appears to be. The mystery plot here is nothing special--Spenser and the inimitable Hawk snoop, crack wise, rough up bad guys, and solve the case, just like always--but the parallel plot involving Susan coming to terms with the demons of her childhood and her need to control the dangerous men in her life gives the novel a beyond-genre dimension. Yes, Spenser is a little too sensitive, and Susan is a little too wise, but Parker has always known how to mix fantasy and realism in a way that works as wish fulfillment for reality-bound readers. This is a hard-boiled love story with an irresistible soft spot in its heart: substitute mobsters for communists, and you have The Way We Were with a happy ending. Bill Ott


From Kirkus Reviews
In Spenser's 25th appearance, the peerless Boston shamus is reduced to doing pro bono work on behalf of his lover Susan Silverman's scapegrace of an ex-husband. At least that's how it starts out. Brad Sterling (after sharing his last name with Susan, he anglicized himself out of it) is a promoter who arranges charity fund-raisers, and the fallout from the latest one, a big-tent event called Galapalooza, is a sexual harassment suit against him. Even after Brad crawls to his first ex (there are others) for help, he's too manly to admit to Spenser that he's in a jam--their first scene together is all coy giggles on Brad's part, all slow burn on Spenser's--so there's nothing for Spenser to do but talk to the four well-connected complainants, who all, to a woman, tell him they have nothing to say about the case. The obligatory goons show up to threaten Spenser if he doesn't give up the case, but not only do they fail to muss his hair, they don't keep him from finding out that Galapalooza was a bust for participants besides Brad; it didn't raise money for anybody--except possibly an organization called Civil Streets, whose president, Carla Quagliozzi, is just as silent as the alleged harassees, and just as menacing--via her secret weapon, seamy attorney Richard Gavin--as the goons. Then Brad takes a powder, leaving behind a dead body in his office. The cops are after Brad; the goons are after Spenser; and Spenser turns out, by the time he's fished the last secret out of Galapalooza, to be after just about every crimelord in Boston. Parker (Small Vices, 1997, etc.) writes as mean a page as ever. But this time the daisy chain of felonies is limp and illogical, and the deep moralizing--Susan's florid attitudinizing about her onetime husband--is merely self-important. Fortunately, there's always next year. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Spenser's back. And Susan's ex is quaking in his boots...

Susan Silverman's ex doesn't call himself "Silverman" anymore--he's changed his name to "Sterling." And that's not the only thing that's phony about him. A do-gooding charity fundraiser, he's been accused of sexual harassment by no less than four different women. And not long after Spenser starts investigating, Sterling is wanted for a bigger charge: murder...

"Sparkling."--Detroit Free Press

"A highly satisfactory addition to a well-rounded series."-- Houston Chronicle

"Smooth as silk."-- Orlando Sentinel

"A corker."-- Buffalo News

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Brad Sterling - former Harvard football player, ne'er-dowell, and Susan Silverman's long-out-of-touch ex-husband - is, by all appearances, a successful businessman. But when he is charged with sexual harassment in the course of running a vast fund-raiser called Galapalooza, he turns to Susan for help. Though Brad denies the charge, he's desperate, behind in alimony and child support to other exes, and on the verge of dissolution. When Spenser reluctantly agrees to the case, he finds Brad denies everything. Sterling claims everything is fine - he is free of debt and free of problems. While the harassment charge begins to look more and more specious, Spenser begins to sense there is something wrong with Galapalooza, when leads to charities turn into dead end. Susan, meanwhile, becomes steadily more problematic as she wrestles with demons reinvigorated by the resurrection of her ex-husband. As the questions mount, Brad disappears, a body is found, and a shadowy mob connection begins to coalesce. Spenser finds himself fighting a two-front war: against some very bad men on the one hand, and an increasingly difficult Susan, struggling with her own resurrection, on the other.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The 25th Spenser novel isn't a romance, but it's all about love. In early springtime, Susan Silverman, the elegant psychologist and lover who long ago softened the heart of Boston's preeminent thug-sized PI, asks Spenser to investigate the sexual harassment suit that has been filed against her first husband, Brad Sterling. Susan's ambivalence about Brad's predicament doesn't make the case easy for Spenser; nor does the gradually disclosed involvement of the noted Harvard Law School professor whose young wife is one of the plaintiffs. As Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, trace Brad's business dealings (he's a professional fund-raiser who's hired to run mammoth charity events), they also come up against a lawyer employed by the local organized crime crowd and some hired muscle associated with same, one of whom is found fatally shot in Brad's office. The next murder victim, a woman, turns out to be the director of a counseling service for ex-cons, which was also listed as benefiting from the most recent charity bash. What's more, the dead woman had her own connection to the still-missing Brad. Threatened repeatedly with fists and guns while coping with Susan's rare emotional uncertainty, Spenser stays the course to a resolution in which he and Susan both prevail. The mystery in this valentine may be insubstantial, but readers who pick up Parker's bestselling series for its characters and atmosphere will be delighted. BOMC main selection. (Mar.)

Kirkus Reviews

In Spenser's 25th appearance, the peerless Boston shamus is reduced to doing pro bono work on behalf of his lover Susan Silverman's scapegrace of an ex-husband. At least that's how it starts out. Brad Sterling (after sharing his last name with Susan, he anglicized himself out of it) is a promoter who arranges charity fund-raisers, and the fallout from the latest one, a big-tent event called Galapalooza, is a sexual harassment suit against him. Even after Brad crawls to his first ex (there are others) for help, he's too manly to admit to Spenser that he's in a jam—their first scene together is all coy giggles on Brad's part, all slow burn on Spenser's—so there's nothing for Spenser to do but talk to the four well-connected complainants, who all, to a woman, tell him they have nothing to say about the case. The obligatory goons show up to threaten Spenser if he doesn't give up the case, but not only do they fail to muss his hair, they don't keep him from finding out that Galapalooza was a bust for participants besides Brad; it didn't raise money for anybody—except possibly an organization called Civil Streets, whose president, Carla Quagliozzi, is just as silent as the alleged harassees, and just as menacing—via her secret weapon, seamy attorney Richard Gavin—as the goons. Then Brad takes a powder, leaving behind a dead body in his office. The cops are after Brad; the goons are after Spenser; and Spenser turns out, by the time he's fished the last secret out of Galapalooza, to be after just about every crimelord in Boston. Parker (Small Vices, 1997, etc.) writes as mean a page as ever. But this time the daisy chain of felonies is limp and illogical, and the deepmoralizing—Susan's florid attitudinizing about her onetime husband—is merely self-important. Fortunately, there's always next year. (Book-of-the-Month Club main selection)