Cheap Shot

March 10, 2014
In Atkins’s assured third Spenser novel (after 2013’s Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland), New England Patriots linebacker Kinjo Heywood, who suspects he’s being followed, hires PI Spenser to look into the perceived threats. Someone may be unhappy that Heywood, who was implicated in a shooting at a Manhattan nightclub, emerged from the investigation with only a weapons violation. The star’s reputation as a dirty player also could be behind the harassment, with opposing teams potentially seeking to rattle him just as the season gets underway. When Heywood’s seven-year-old son, Akira, is kidnapped, Spenser works frantically to bring Akira back safely, despite sometimes working at cross-purposes from the boy’s father. Because the “old Italian and Irish crews” that Spenser used to know are no more, he has to turn to new underworld sources for information. Atkins’s gift for mimicking the late Robert B. Parker could lead to a long run, to the delight of Spenser devotees. Agent: Helen Brann, Helen Brann Agency.

April 15, 2014
Boston's premier private eye signs on to recover the kidnapped son of one of Boston's sports heroes. Defensive lineman Kinjo Heywood is known for his crushing attacks on opposing quarterbacks. Now that a shadowy someone is following him around his hometown, his agent, Steven Rosen, and Patriots security chief Jeff Barnes are forced to play a different kind of defense. Brought in to find out who's forcing Kinjo to keep looking over his shoulder, Spenser has barely gotten started when Kinjo's second wife, Cristal, reports that his beloved son, Akira, 9, has been grabbed from her car on the way to school. Days pass with no word from the kidnappers, leaving Spenser and his trainee, Zebulon Sixkill, plenty of time to reopen the case of Cape Verde gangbanger Antonio Lima, shot two years ago in a Manhattan nightclub shortly after a scuffle with Kinjo over a waitress--a case Kinjo's brother Ray paid Lima's family handsomely to make go away. When a caller to a popular sports-talk radio show finally phones in a ransom demand for Akira, the $100,000 amount seems suspiciously low, and Spenser soon finds out why. His success puts him in tight with Kinjo but leaves him on the outs with the athlete's handlers and the cops. Then Kinjo takes to the airwaves himself to make a quixotic announcement that seems calculated to push the story, whose tension Atkins (Robert B. Parker's Wonderland, 2013, etc.) has so far managed admirably, over a cliff. And it does, as the tale fizzles out in a shower of forced entries, meetings with conveniently connected mobsters, eleventh-hour twists and bang bang bang. Two-thirds of a perfectly controlled kidnap tale, with Spenser close to his top form, crashes, burns and goes down without a trace in the end.

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May 1, 2014
Kinjo Heywood is a ferocious middle linebacker for the New England Patriots, but he has a penchant for off-the field violence as well. When he thinks he's being followed, his agent hires Boston private investigator Spenser to find and discourage the followers. If a confrontation between Kinjo and his shadows occurs, Spenser will handle any rough stuff. But Spenser's simple bodyguard duty turns serious when Kinjo's 10-year-old son is kidnapped. Perhaps it was masterminded by the boy's mother, Kinjo's ex-wife. Nope. She has an alibi and is every bit as invested in the boy's return as Kinjo. How about the current trophy wife? Nope again; Spenser eliminates her fairly quickly. Perhaps the kidnapping goes back to Kinjo's possible involvement in a shooting death at a New York dance club. The three thugstersSpenser, longtime running buddy Hawk, and Spenser's prot'g' Zemploy their usual investigative techniques of intimidation and smart-ass repartee in the service of solving the case. Atkins' third shot at the Spenser caseload shows steady improvement over the first two. Spenser is as tough and funny as ever, and Atkins has become a worthy successor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)