Product Description

A knock on Spenser's office door can only mean one thing: a new case. This time the visitor is a local lawyer with an interesting story. Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years she's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they've all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower- and now he's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower "cease and desist," so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, Spenser's assignment goes from blackmail to murder.

As matters become more complicated, Spenser's longtime love, Susan, begins offering some input by analyzing Eisenhower's behavior patterns in hopes of opening up a new avenue of investigation. It seems that not all of Gary's women are rich. So if he's not using them for blackmail, then what is his purpose? Spenser switches tactics to focus on the husbands, only to find that innocence and guilt may be two sides of the same coin.

With its eloquently spare prose and some of the best supporting characters to grace the printed page, The Professional is further proof that "[t]here's hardly an author in the crime novel business like Parker" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1301 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780399155949
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review

Sue Grafton and Robert B. Parker: Author One-on-One
In this Amazon exclusive, we brought together blockbuster authors Sue Grafton and Robert B. Parker and asked them to interview each other.

Sue Grafton is the New York Times-bestselling author of the beloved Kinsey Millhone mystery series, which continues to delight millions of readers across the globe. Read on to see Sue Grafton's questions for Robert B. Parker, or turn the tables to see what Parker asked Grafton.

Grafton: During your career, you've generally worked as a solo writer. Aside from your collaboration with Raymond Chandler (quite dead), how did you enjoy the experience of writing with your wife, Joan? I notice a long break between Three Weeks in Spring, which was published in 1978, and A Year at the Races, which was published in 1990.

Parker: Joan is an idea person more than a writer. She has done a lot of uncredited thinking for me. But Three Weeks in Spring, about her first bout with breast cancer, was a special case. And A Year at the Races, also nonfiction, was about our initiation into the world of thoroughbred racing. I have found it wise for me to write and Joan to think (egad, what if it were the other way?), but I have also found it wise not to speak for her. I liked working with her. In fact, I like pretty much everything with her.

Grafton: I notice in your bibliography that you wrote a nonfiction book called Parker on Writing. I'd be interested in reading it, but I decided I couldn't afford the $499.99 the book is selling for online. How do you feel about a reprint? (P.S. This is not a sly hint that you should send me a copy….)

Parker: Parker on Writing is a collection of random items loosely about writing that Herb Yellin at Lord John Press collected into a finely manufactured limited edition. Herb is a friend, and given what he paid, I can convincingly say it was affection not money that captured me. I feel fine about a reprint…. If I have an extra I will send you one, but I'll have to look—it’s quite possible that I don't.

Grafton: I'm curious about your experience in writing Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel. What prompted you to write about Spenser's early life? Did you learn things about him you hadn't known before?

Parker: My publisher, agent, and wife all wanted me to try a YA novel. I did three, culminating, at my publisher's request, with Chasing the Bear. Since I knew a great deal about Spenser's adulthood, it was mostly a matter of jacking up the adulthood and sliding a consistent childhood under it. YA novels are hard because you know a great deal that you can't use.

Grafton: I saw the movie Appaloosa last night on DVD, and while I haven't had a chance to read the novel and study the two side by side, I got the impression that the movie was close to what you had in mind. Will you write about Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch again? You did seem to leave the door open to that possibility.

Parker: I’ve written two sequels to Appaloosa (Resolution and Brimstone) and am finishing up a third (Blue-Eyed Devil). Ed Harris did a wonderful job, I thought, with the movie. It is as close as it could possibly be to the book, and those parts that had to be added are hard for me to tell from my own stuff. Harris is genius, as is Viggo [Mortensen]—they nailed the characters and the relationship. You can also take Ed Harris's word—in your own adventures in Southern California you may have noticed how infrequent that is. Incidentally, Bragg's lawyer in the courtroom scene was played by the great Daniel T. Parker.

Grafton: How do you spend your time when you're not writing? Hobbies? Leisure activities? I'm not very good at having fun, but I'm hoping you are. Please advise.

Parker: My friend John Marsh once remarked, "I hate fun." I concur. Mostly, I just live my life, which turns out to be fun. I work out, box with a trainer, watch ball games, go out to dinner with Joan. You've met Joan. We’ve been married fifty-three years. Now that's fun.

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From Publishers Weekly
Bestseller Parker makes producing snappy banter look easy in his 37th Spenser novel (after Rough Weather). He also manages to draw new readers into the Boston PI's major personal relationships—with love interest Susan Silverman and friend/ally/bodyguard Hawk—without shoveling on the backstory. Spenser agrees to help a quartet of married women fend off extortion demands from stud Gary Eisenhower, with whom each has had an affair. Meanwhile, the husband of one of the women under blackmail threat hires some thugs to deal with the matter. The action takes its time getting to a dead body, but, as usual, the smooth, entertaining prose more than compensates for any deficiencies of plot. The absence of major personal developments for Spenser or his associates marks this as a less memorable entry than others in this iconic series, but it remains a solid, enjoyable contemporary detective novel. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Robert B. Parker is the author of more than fifty books.

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Customer Reviews

RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "SEXUALLY... SPENSER & SUSAN ARE LEGENDS IN THEIR *OWN-MIND*!
Sadly the days of the hard hitting... hard shooting... unyielding... snappy repartee... private detective Spenser... is no more. The former "MAN'S-MAN" who spent untold hours with the tough rough-edged men on both sides of the law... is now more content to exchange double-entendre's with the always annoying Susan. In between the relentless honey-dripping dialogue in which Spenser constantly reminds the reader Ad Nauseam that Susan is the most beautiful woman in the world and would look like a runway model even if she wore a ten-year-old unwashed mechanics uniform... Susan dutifully returns serve to Spenser... by unrelentingly jogging the reader's memory as to Spenser being the stud of all studs. And of course for experienced Spenser fans you know it has to be stated at least three times per "short-story" that assuredly Susan has a Ph.D. from Harvard. The concept of the crime to be investigated that this saga is built around is hard to swallow. A female lawyer approaches "Stud" Spenser representing four rich women who all have a similar M.O. They married rich older men... and they're all having adulterous sex with the same man Gary Eisenhower. And now Gary whose real name in a prior life was Goran Pappas is blackmailing all of them with sex tapes of their escapades. Even for a light hearted Spenser tale the fact that all four women still want to keep the amorous affairs alive seems farfetched. Where all credibility dissipates is when for some unknown reason Spenser takes a liking to Eisenhower/Pappas.

Parker dutifully reaches into his extensive collection of former notorious Spenser characters... if not physically in the non-action... they are at least mentioned by reputation... such as... Rita Fiore, Tony Marcus, Junior, Ty-Bop, Vinnie Morris, Chollo, Frank Belson and Quirk among others. But as is Parker's wont of late... they're not given any hard exciting action.

And of course there is everybody's favorite *HAWK*. If a character could miraculously come to life... Hawk would have an unbeatable lawsuit against Spencer for reasons of neglect and emasculation. Hawk has become nothing but a chauffeur and sometime babysitter... along with being "eye-candy" and the immediate desire of any woman in any situation... except when Susan is raining studly double entendre's on her snookums... that big hunk Spenser. A full literary character castration is performed on Hawk when he has a book at a bar and Spenser says: "WHAT'S THE BOOK?" Hawk responds: "THE NEW ONE BY JANET EVANOVICH." Oy vey! Parker's use of Hawk in the last few years is equivalent to having a souped-up Ferrari locked in your garage that is never taken out on the street.

Long time Spenser fans won't be shocked when I tell you that once again Spenser won't quit a case even when he's no longer being paid... thank goodness Susan has a paying job and in case you forgot from the three times you are told that she has a "Ph.D. from Harvard"... late in the book she also says: "IF I WEREN'T A SOPHISTICATED PSYCHOTHERAPIST WITH ADVANCED DEGREES FROM HARVARD, I MIGHT BE FAINTLY SHOCKED."

How about a stand-alone series for Hawk? I'm sure we'd all love it, *WE'D BE FOOLS NOT TO!*

Painful as it is to say maybe it's time....
To put Spenser out to pasture. This latest Parker installment disturbed me on many levels. I can take the same tired dialogue repeated over and over. (We'd be fools not to.) I can take hearing that Susan went to Harvard how many times now? I can even take the large print and acres of white space that mean the book can be read in just a few hours. But I am to believe that Spenser would take a liking to a parasitic blackmailer who preys on women? Spenser, the romantic who rides in on his white horse to save the fairer sex would work hard to save THIS guy's life? Please. This made no sense to me whatsoever. And in the end the whole blackmail part of the plot was much ado about nothing. Just a lame segue into the murders that made the first half of the book seem disconnected to the last half. There was no mystery there either. Anyone who didn't figure out who the murderer was just wasn't paying attention. Nor was the Of Mice and Men rip off any surprise either. Who didn't see that coming? The whole story just made me tired. Even the brief appearance of Hawk couldn't save the day.

For the first time ever I don't recommend reading a Spenser novel. If Parker is so tired of writing Spenser and Hawk that he gives such a poor effort then these characters should be respectfully retired before the final novels spoil the whole pot.

Second-Rate Spenser
Parker seems to have been phoning them in recently, and this is particularly evident with his latest Spenser novel. The plotline is unbelievable and Spenser seems to act in wholly unrealistic ways, whether it be befriending a blackmailer or (for no good reason) shielding a murderer from the police. The dialog between Spenser and Susan has the feeling of having been written before, numerous times; in fact, just once, I would like to go through an entire Spenser novel without having to read Susan and/or Spenser commenting on the fact that she has a PhD from Harvard. I've always been a big fan of Parker's books, ever since reading The Judas Goat decades ago, but I think Parker should start emphasizing quality over quantity.