Robert B. Parker Bad Business

Bad Business

Robert B. Parker

Putnam, March 2004, $22.95, 320 pp.

ISBN 0399151451

No case is ever easy for Boston private detective Spenser. Wealthy socialite Marlene Rowley hires Spenser to find evidence that her husband Trent, the CEO of Kinergy (an energy trading business), is cheating on her. He tails Trent and quickly learns he is having an affair with Ellen Eisen and that another sleuth is following Ellen, whose husband Bernard also works at Kinergy.

Spenser's case becomes ludicrous when he realizes that a third private detective is following Marlene. On only Spenser's second day of surveillance, Trent is murdered in his office during working hours and nobody saw a thing. Marlene wants Spenser to find out who made her a widow, which leads Spenser into a cesspool containing sexual predators, financial finagling and serial killers.

It has been three decades since Robert B. Parker write the first Spenser novel and the series is as fresh, innovative and appealing today as it was then. The sublime but well written story line is fun to follow as private sleuthing seems like a lucrative business at least in the Boston area. Told in the first person from Spenser's point of view, BAD BUSINESS is a work of humorous prose and fantastic characterizations.

Harriet Klausner