Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Implausible plotting, incessant wisecracks, some lively action that's more A-Team than Hammett: smug thug Spenser's personal 'code of honor' has never seemed to pompous and specious.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been.

And eventually, after infiltrating Costigan's private-army training compound, Spenser and Hawk do pry Susan away from Russell-but they must still kill Costigan Sr. Then the lethal duo acquires an unlikely ally: the inept CIA, which wants Spenser to murder Costigan Sr. They set out to find Susan-committing murder, arson, and other neat crimes (for supposedly noble reasons) along the way. So white-knight Spenser flies to the rescue, breaking Hawk out of jail. Spenser's estranged true love, neurotic Susan Silverman, has gotten romantically entangled out in California with possessive Russell Costigan, son of a shady, powerful tycoon Spenser's bosom-buddy, black enforcer Hawk, has attempted to help Susan, winding up in jail on murder charges.

And this new episode follows the recent pattern-lots of macho posturing and 'relationship' babble, but little suspense, mystery, or fresh characterization. Like Dick Francis and others, Parker is receiving major media attention while producing his weakest work: there hasn't been a completely satisfying Spenser outing, in fact, since Promised Land.

A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker