Bad Business

The CEO of Kinergy, a wildly successful energy-trading company, has his eye on the White House rather than his business. Meanwhile, trusted senior executives are cooking the books and makin' whoopie in a spouse-swapping setup engineered by a free-love radio talk show host. Bad business, indeed! Robert B. Parker's writing has never been never sharper, matching an engaging plot with Spenser's famous razor-sharp one-liners. Joe Mantegna, who plays Spenser in the made-for-cable Spenser movies, does a great job giving vocal identity to each of the odd assortment of good guys, bad guys, and ladies of questionable character, using pace and emotion to effectively separate one from another. In this 31st Spenser novel, Parker is still on his game, and Spenser is still the same irrepressible Spenser. T.J.M. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

February 9, 2004
Spenser #31 finds the veteran Boston PI tackling corporate crime in a routine yet absorbing outing. As usual, Spenser enters the case at an angle, this time because he's hired by one Marlene Rowley to prove that her husband Trent, CFO of energy firm Kinergy, is cheating on her. Before long the PI learns that marital cheating is all the rage among Kinergy's players, with the hanky-panky orchestrated by radio personality Darrin O'Mara, who runs popular sex seminars on the side. Maybe all that cheating explains why Spenser keeps running into other PIs hired by Kinergy folk, but it doesn't point to why Trent is found shot dead at Kinergy headquarters. Spenser links Kinergy's slick founder/CEO to the sex ring and blackmails him to gain access to Kinergy's records, unveiling a pattern of accounting deceptions that reveal a company about to go under. There's less violence than usual in this Spenser novel but more detecting, which may explain why there's little of the PI's tough sidekick Hawk but much of his psychologist girlfriend Susan, which may not please the many Spenser fans who grew tired years ago of the love banter between the soul mates. The novel ends with suspects crowded into a room to be questioned by Spenser, a classic yet tired climax that is emblematic of the tale: Parker is treading water here, albeit with some flair and a good deal of humor. One suspects that his heart belongs not to this story but to his other book due out this year, in May, the highly anticipated Jackie Robinson novel Double Play.