It had been a long spell since I’d read this entry in the Spenser canon, and while there are some great things about it, I found it less appealing this time around. The highlight, of course, is the expanding role of Vinnie in the Spenser world. Circumstances allow him to shift from being the dangerous right hand of Joe Broz, to the dangerous anti-hero when those circumstances force him to finally make the break from the gangster who has been almost like a father to him. It is the “almost” that comes into play here, and forces the split.

Yet there is far too little of that, and far too little of Linda Thomas, the woman across the way from Spenser in Valediction. She was in essence the turning point in this series, the exact moment where it became something different, and something less than it had been before. She was a breath of fresh air compared to the vain and pretentious Susan Silverman. With Susan Silverman finally out of the way, off fooling around with someone else, there was a moment in Valediction when many readers hoped that Spenser would drop Silverman like a bad habit. It would have moved both Spenser, and the series, away from Spenser’s smothering obsession with the insipid and undeserving Susan Silverman. But Parker extricated himself from that burgeoning relationship with Linda, and then came-a-runnin’ when the self-absorbed Silverman got herself in a terrible mess in A Catskill Eagle. They were back, more snobbish and devoted than ever, still too cool to get married, the depth and breadth of their love for Susan Silverman — “their” was no typo — more psychologically cloying than ever before.

I bring this up because in this book, Spenser does. Or rather Parker does. Because we learn much about Spenser’s past here, we also have a more wistful Spenser. In a return to the earlier books, he seems more aware of females other than Silverman in this one. And at least twice in Pastime, Spenser thinks briefly about Linda Thomas. As a reader, I almost felt that Parker was having some regrets about the literary decision which perhaps mirrored his own life. It would make sense, because Parker could not have been unaware of readers’ divided reactions about Silverman, and how he had hurt the series.

In a later entry in this fine series, Parker had Spenser himself finally own up to Susan Silverman’s terrible flaws, flaws which turned Spenser into something less than he might have been. He admits through Spenser’s ruminations that Spenser/Parker is not unaware of how vain and pretentious Susan Silverman is. Spenser just can’t do anything but accept it, however, because he loves her. He has too much invested in her. What Parker doesn’t say, and can't through Spenser's voice, is that in a literary sense he’s let the good ones get away, and it’s too late to go back. The die was cast. It reads almost as an apology to the reader.

In this story, I could feel the change in the series this time around. The series still had echoes of what it had been, but they were wistful echoes. Parker was a terrific writer, and even the post Catskill Eagle books are good reads — almost all of them, at least. But I felt the change here more than in some of the others. You can feel it becoming about THEM, the plots taking a back seat to Silverman, the center of Spenser’s world and existence. Even though this one is more about Spenser’s surrogate son, Paul, from Early Autumn, and there are some tremendously written action sequences in the woods, and the great stuff with Vinnie and Joe Broz, and Broz’s kid, I felt the mold hardening here, and so did Parker. And it was too late to do anything about it.

Paul needs to find his mother, if for no other reason than he needs to resolve some issues before he marries. But it turns out she’s hooked up with another sleaze-ball in a long line of them. And her new beau has run off with a ton of Joe Broz’s money. Broz’s feelings for his own son mirror Spenser’s for Paul. But Gerry isn’t cut out for Joe’s line of work, and things get ugly before there’s any resolution. In fact, it leads to the split by Vinnie from Joe, when it becomes clear that though he is the son Joe never had, he’ll never be Joe’s son. There are three rites of passage in this book — Paul’s, Gerry’s, and Vinnie’s.

There’s far too much psychobabble in this one — another Susan Silverman side effect — and far too little of the scenes with Vinnie and Broz. A lengthy and violent confrontation in the woods is good stuff, but it doesn’t quite elevate this one enough. It’s good, but you can feel the entrenching of patterns here. Pearl the wonder dog is introduced in this one. She is, of course, Susan’s dog, given to her by an ex-husband (lucky sod, he got away). Dogs are wonderful, you can’t not love them. But you just know Spenser’s going to end up doing the dog-walking, the feeding, and especially the cleaning up. Sort of the same thing he does for Susan Silverman. So as I turned the final page on this one, I had mixed feelings about the direction this series took. Maybe Parker did, too. ( )

First edition as new with remainder mark

In the 18th Spenser mystery by Robert Parker problems are somewhat solved and the bad guys are sort of defeated. Paul Giacomin, who is the closest thing Spenser has to a son, arrives with a problem. His mother has disappeared. Spenser does not like Patty, Paul's mother, at all. Ten years before Paul was in the middle of a big divorce fight between his parents. Spenser rescued him from his parents and gave Paul the parenting that he would never get otherwise. Patty, who is never without a man, has a new boyfriend who is in hot water with the local mobsters. This book is full of characters we have met in earlier Spenser novels. As always the dialog is great, especially between Spenser and his friend Hawk. The sentences are short, spare and believable. Do they find Paul's mother and how does Spenser handle the mobsters who want to kill Patty's new boyfriend Richard? If they find Patty and Richard where are they hiding? Hint; this story goes from one end of Massachusetts to the other. ( )

tired of Susan nibbling

It's a love story, in many dimensions. Spenser and Suze, Spenser and Paul, Paul and Patty, Patty and her beau, Paul and Paige perhaps, Spenser and his father and his uncles, Broz and son, Vinnie and Broz.... ( )