BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS
(Print: 1/1/1987)
(Digital: Yes.)
Audio: 8/17/2009; 9780307705099; Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; Duration 5:04:32 (4 parts); Unabridged.
(Film: There was a Spenser for Hire tv series).

SERIES:
Spenser Series (Book 2)

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Spenser – Private Investigator
Susan Silverman – High School Counselor & love interest
Lieutenant Healy – In charge of the Missing Persons case Spenser is hired to help with.
Roger Bartlett – Father of the missing child case. Person who hires Spenser.
Kevin Bartlett – The missing child.
Margery Bartlett – The missing child’s mother.

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
Spenser is hired to find a missing teen. The clues are quirky, but the case is none-the-less dangerous, for all that. Spenser encounters Susan Silverman, the high school counselor and they become involved. This character does quite a bit of drinking which doesn’t seem to get in the way.
There’s quite a bit of detail-I’m undecided on whether it’s too much. We know how rooms are decorated and what everyone is wearing.
I enjoy the numerous literature and media references. One being the play of this title off the song, “God BLESS the Child . . .” (“Whose Got it’s Own”) which someone plays on a record player during the course of events.

AUTHOR:
Robert B. Parker (9/17/1932 – 1/8/2010). RobertBParker.net says, “Robert B. Parker's résumé is familiar to most of his readers. Bob was renowned for his Spenser novels, featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye, which earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim. He also launched two other bestselling series featuring, respectively, Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone and Boston private detective Sunny Randall.”

I do enjoy the wit. It’s not always funny, but it’s sometimes surprising what he comes up with.

NARRATOR(S):
Michael Prichard. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing says: “Michael Prichard has played several thousand characters during his career. While he has been seen performing over a hundred of them in theater and film, SmartMoney magazine named him one of the Top Ten Golden Voices.”
His voice sounds a bit mature for the age of the character, but my husband and I love that he articulates clearly, and his characterizations are good.

GENRE:
Fiction, Hardboiled Mystery

LOCATIONS:
Boston, MA

TIME FRAME:
1970’s

SUBJECTS:
Body building, Gay lifestyle, wayward teens, murder, dysfunctional families

NARRATIVE STYLE:
First person

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 1
“’Mr. Spenser, are you listening to us?’
I straightened my head up and looked back at Roger and Margery Bartlett.
‘Yes ma’am,’ I said. ‘You were just saying about how you never dealt with a private detective before, but this was an extreme case and there seemed no other avenue. Everybody who comes in here tends to say that same thing to me.’
‘Well, it’s true.’ She was probably older than she looked and not as heavy. Her legs were very slim, the kind women admire and men don’t. They made her plumpish upper body look heavier. Her face had a bland, spoiled, pretty look, carefully made up with eye shadow and pancake makeup and false eyelashes. She looked as though if she cried she’d erode. Her hair, freshly blond, was cut close around her face. Gaminelike, I bet her hairdresser said. Mia Farrow, I bet he said. She was wearing a paisley caftan slit up the side and black, ankle-strapped platform shoes with three-inch soles and heels. Sitting opposite me, she had crossed her legs carefully so that the caftan fell away above the knee. I wanted to say, don’t, your legs are too thin. But I knew she wouldn’t believe me. She thought they were wonderful.
Just below her rib cage I could see the little bulge where her girdle stopped and the compressed flesh spilled over the top. She was wearing huge lavender sunglasses and lavender-dyed wooden beads on a leather thong. Authentic folk art, picked them up in Morocco on our last long weekend, the naivete is charming, don’t you think?
‘We want you to find our son,’ she said.
‘Okay.’
‘He’s been gone a week. He ran away.’
‘Do you know where he might have run?’ I asked.
‘No,’ her husband answered. ‘I looked everywhere I could think of—friends, relatives, places he might hang out. I’ve asked everyone I know that knows him. He’s gone.’
‘Have you notified the police?’
They both nodded. Mr. Bartlett said, ‘I talked to the chief myself. He says they’ll do what they can, but of course it’s a small force and there isn’t much . . .’
He let his voice trail off and sat still and uncomfortable looking at me. He looked ill at ease in a shirt and tie. He was dressed in what must have been his wife’s idea of the contemporary look. You can usually tell when a guy’s wife buys his clothes. He had on bggy white cuffed flares, a solid scarlet shirt with long collar points, a wide pink tie, and a red-and-white-plaid seersucker jacket with wide lapels and the waist nipped. A prefolded handkerchief in his breast pocket matched the tie. He had on black and white saddle shoes and looked as happy as a hound in a doggie sweater. He should have been wearing coveralls and steel-toed shoes. His hands looked strong and calloused, the nails broken, and there was grime imbedded that the shower wouldn’t touch.”
RATING: 3.5 stars. Yes, sort of low by my standards, but higher than the last one. I don’t like that the hero is a bit of an anti-hero and hope that changes as the series goes on. The somewhat insulting wise-cracks aren’t likely to stop, but maybe the heavy drinking will?

STARTED-FINISHED
5/22/21-6/12/21
( )

This novel irritated me to no end. Parker apes Chandler, and I suppose there is something to be said for his attempt to convey a sense of time and place in 1970s Boston suburbia. But Parker does not really have anything to say; the mystery is underwhelming and Parker has a weird fixation with dads not being there for their sons or something. ( )

Appie Knoll es el tipo de suburbio donde los niños crecen bien. Pero algo está mal. Kevin Bartlett, de catorce años, desaparece. Todo el mundo piensa que se ha escapado, hasta que llega la nota de rescate de la tira cómica. Spenser no tarda mucho en hacerse una idea: una familia acomodada hirviendo de rabia, un chico desesperado que hace amigos extraños... amigos como Vic Harroway, fisicoculturista. Mr. Muscle es la única pista de Spenser y no está hablando... excepto con los puños. Pero cuando llega el momento, cuando la vida de un niño está en juego, Spenser también puede hablar ese idioma.

More of the same from Spenser in this book, with lots of wisecracking, flirting, and a little fighting. The usual fun, it seems.

The story was interesting, with a few twists toward the end, and the solution was not obvious. It went quickly, and I was done before I started, almost. ( )

God Save the Child is Parker's second Spenser story. This is where Spenser meets his long time love interest Susan Silverman. It seems a bit dated for 2016 since Parker wrote it in 1974. There are flared pants and unbuttoned shirts and medallions on chains but it still makes a good story. ( )