Trouble Is His Business-A Spenser Novel By Robert B. Parker-A Review  

Book Review

By Sam Lowell

Sixkill, Robert B. Parker, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 2011 

Funny what will turn up on your summer reading list and why. Sure I am like any other heated, roasted urban dweller looking for a little light reading to while away the summer doldrums. Most days I like to review high-toned literary masterpieces or squirrelly little historical books fit for the academy. But those kinds of books cannot survive the summer siege. Which brings us to the book under review, Robert B. Parker’s last Spenser series book written by him Sixkill. (Others, I think, have written for the series under their own names if I am not mistaken.) Or will bring us to the book under review after I go through a little of how I came to read this one. How I came to read a crime novel for crying out loud. That is not as condescending as it sounds since long ago I learned the very hard lesson that serious crime writers like Dashiell Hammett, the above-mentioned Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, Ross MacDonald and a few others, had earned their places in the American literary canon. Their hard-bitten sparse dialogues and plotlines were worthy of emulation, or if not that then a thoroughgoing serious read.

That is how in a roundabout way we get to this book. See every year when the doldrums come I automatically reach for a little Chandler or Hammett from my library to see the real deal, to see the masters strut their stuff in order to spruce up (and parse, if possible) my own writing. This year when I did so I noticed a book Poodle Spring by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. This final Philip Marlowe series book was never finished by Chandler before he died in 1959. Parker finished it up in 1989. I have reviewed that book mostly in positive fashion in this space.

Robert B. Parker, of course had been a name known to me as the crime novel writer of the Spenser series of which I had read several of the earlier ones before moving on to others interests. While checking up on what Parker, who died in 2010, had subsequently written I noticed another Chandler-Parker collaboration Perchance To Dream: Robert B. Parker’s Sequel To Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. I have reviewed that effort, again mostly in positive fashion, although with some longing for old Chandler’s touch and flair for language. Since I was on a roll, was being guided by the ghost of Raymond Chandler maybe, I decided to check out what turned out to be Parker’s last Spenser effort. Now we are all caught up on genesis.

Spenser (like the English poet as he liked to note early in the series), an intrepid PI working out of familiar to me Boston, had many of Marlowe’s qualities, had faced danger alone with a sure hand. Naturally he had to be updated a bit for modern sensibilities around the women question, the race question and how to operate in proper Boston a very different milieu from the slumming streets of LA that Marlowe worked in his prime. The Spenser series’ strong points reflected that toughness, that errant knight tilting after windmills that had made Marlowe (especially onscreen) such a compelling character. And Parker’s story lines early on as well. This last one of the series while it had its moments told me a lot about why I had abandoned the series after the first several novels in the days when he and his pal Hawk did seeking rough justice thing. This one seemed rather formula-driven in the dialogue. The usual love bug stuff with his sweetie Susan, their eating habits at better Boston restaurants and an off-hand search for justice around the edges. The story of Sixkill, the Cree who became his “associate” was the only thing that saved this one from being below ho-hum.     

Check out this story line and see what I mean. A young woman is dead in the room of a famous if slovenly and overweight not one of nature’s noblemen movie star, Jumbo Nelson, in Boston to shoot a film and make a ton of money. Now this Jumbo is nothing but a sexist pig to put it bluntly among his many off-putting qualities but Spenser is asked by a cop friend who has his own doubts about what happened to see if Jumbo did the deed, committed rape and murder to cover his tracks. Or if it was an accident, or something. So Spenser went to work, checked everything and everyone out like he always did as a professional. Jumbo though was stonewalling him (to be kind, it was actually worse than that), tried to beat him down with his hefty Cree bodyguard Sixkill of the title. The kid was some kind of ex-college football star who could have made the pros except he liked sex, drugs, and booze too much. So bodyguard. But not bodyguard enough to take old pro Spenser down.    

So, fired in a rage by Jumbo, Sixkill latched onto Spenser, and Spenser latched onto Sixkill, maybe not like Hawk in the old days but with something driving to help the kid out, get him thinking straight. Meanwhile the mystery around the young woman’s death after checking with family, friends and others began to look like a weird sex tryst gone wrong. And in the end whether Spenser liked it or not that is the way he played it to his cop friend. Old Jumbo might just walk if push came to shove. Of course along the way some very influential film-backers, some very “connected” in the old-fashioned sense of the word, mobsters, gangsters, okay , had been very, very nervous about what Spenser might find out, might find that Jumbo did the deed, actually murdered the girl,  and they would be out serious dough. Despite being warned off repeatedly Spenser naturally kept pushing the envelope, kept making the connected guys nervous. They finally sent some local hit men after Spenser. What a joke. They sent their top guy, a guy who liked to kill for kicks. What a joke. Zeroes. Ho hum. But you can see what I mean by the series having run out of steam by this time in Parker’s career. Thankfully Sixkill was hanging around enough to create a nice mini-story.