Rough Weather by Robert B. Parker -- a Review

For years I've been complaining about Robert B. Parker's books going down hill, and I keep reading them. Parker's books are now like potato chips. Easily ingested, not very good for you, and when you finish them, you wish you had more.

Parker's latest Spenser book, Rough Weather is more of the same. The plot finds Spenser defending Heidi Bradshaw, a woman who needs the big man as an escort to her daughter's wedding. Spenser, with his girlfriend Susan in tow, attends the wedding, held on the woman's island house. Also in attendance is Rugar, the professional killer who tried to kill Spenser in Small Vices. As a storm whips the island, Rugar and his men crash the wedding, kidnapping the bride and brutally killing several others. Spenser realizes that the kidnapping makes zero sense for a man as professional as Rugar, and that there is, of course, more to Heidi Bradshaw than meets the eye. The rest of Rough Weather deals with Spenser's attempts to get to the bottom of the kidnapping and learn more about the mysterious Heidi Bradshaw.

The problem with Robert B. Parker's Spenser series is that now, 36 books in, the sense of danger is gone. Spenser is a comic book hero without the four color pictures, complete with his trust black sidekick, Hawk. Each book has become formula, with a person who isn't what he/she seems coming in, offering Spenser their case, Spenser getting into some sort of scrape that makes him investigate deeper than the person's original issue, and then some combination of the series' regular characters helping him beat up a few people, psychoanalyze a few others, and stumble into the solution of the case. While Spenser's dialogue still crackles and entertains, and the books always move along, there is nothing here that sticks in your memory long after you shut the book.

Rough Weather does not deviate from this formula, but is even less of a book for three reasons. One, Parker has Spenser in far too many scenes with girlfriend Susan, who has brought almost every book to a screeching halt with her psychobabble. Two, the solution to the mystery is 100% obvious from almost the beginning. Three, the book's action sequences, always a high point of any Spenser novel, are far too brief.

Still, Rough Weather has several entertaining passages with Spenser and Hawk, and moves at a brisk clip. If you have enjoyed Parker to this point, Rough Weather is an enjoyable way to pass a few hours, nothing more. Here's hoping Parker scales back his book output and starts write more substantial novels to help sustain his legacy as a writer of crime fiction.