Spenser is a private detective working in the Hub City, and he’s just been approached with an interesting job. Red Sox management thinks one of their players is throwing games, and they want him to find out if their hunch is right, and if so, who the ne’er do well is. Posing as an author who is writing a book about the Red Sox, Spenser begins hanging out, getting to know the players and enjoying matches against the Yankees from a primo box. When he catches wind of a clue, it will take him into dangerous territory, involving both gangsters and crooked men attached to professional baseball. This was my first dip into the Spenser verse, and I found Parker’s attempt to resurrect Philip Marlow absolutely charming — from the terse narration to the frequency of violence and the heavy presence of whiskey. I was already predisposed to like this, given the Red Sox connection, but the tapping into Chandler’s style was so effective I could hear Bogie as Marlowe, and I sunk into the story for the pleasure of its narration if nothing else. It turns out a ball player’s wife has a…..past, you might say, and there are a couple of men giving the player the business: he has to throw games or else they’ll expose her. Spenser is able to find another option. I’ll definitely be reading more Spenser, he’s a gas. Parker captures Chandler’s style so well I could hear Bogie-as-Marlowe reading the entire book to me.

Ah, wilderness. The only flaw was that the gun on my right hip kept digging into my back.

“He’d made an error coming to see me, but it was the kind of error guys like Doerr tend to make. They get so used to having everyone say yes to them that they forget about the chance someone will say no.”

“Is his part of your technique, Spenser? Candlelight and wine and perhaps I’ll remember something about the young lady?”
“Well, there’s that. But I hate to eat alone. The only people I know in the City are you and Violet, and Violet already had a date.”
“Well, I don’t know how I feel about being second choice to — what was it you said — an East Village Pimp?”

“You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don’t make you money than anyone I know.”

“I think you’re supposed to value me first,” she said, “then the food basket. I’ve always been suspicious of your value system.”
“You look good enough to eat.”
“I think I won’t pursue that line.”

“This is a thirty-eight caliber Colt detective special. If I pull this trigger, your mastery of the martial arts will be very little use to you.”

“Marty, you are the third person this morning who has offered to disassemble my body. You are also third in order of probable success.”

That’s the thing about a shotgun. At close range you don’t have to go checking pulses afterwards.

“There is a knife blade in the grass,” I said, “and a tiger lies just outside the fire.”
“My God, Spenser, that’s bathetic. Either tell me about what hurts or don’t. But for God’s sake don’t sit here and quote bad verse at me.”
“Oh, damn,” I said. “I was just about to swing into Hamlet.”
“You do and I’ll call the cops.”