Customer Reviews

Rough Weather

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

As a devoted Robert B. Parker fan it is sad to say his Spenser books are becoming a staid cookie-cutter series with almost replaceable by the number scenes. The razor edge that Spenser was famous for is not quite as sharp... and perhaps dulled by his advancing middle age... as more and more literary time is spent with boring predictable time with Susan. Loyal readers know she takes mini-microscopic bites of whatever food she orders... in whatever restaurant they visit. We know that whatever clothes she wears... she is the most beautiful woman Spenser has ever seen... we know that if she says she'll be ready in five minutes... she'll be ready in thirty-five minutes. And even more depressing for readers is the non-stop double entendre sexual conversations between the two of them... that are actually boorishly embarrassing to any adult. (Could you imagine sitting next to them on a cross country flight listening to such sophomoric interaction?)

And then there's Hawk. Just one sentence from Hawk when he enters a scene and there is immediate hope and enthusiasm brewing in the reader's soul. In this installment he doesn't do much more than chauffeur Spenser around.

The storyline starts when Heidi Bradshaw an attractive rich and famous woman who built her wealth by marrying a number of rich men ambles into Spenser's office and hires him to be her male escort and provide a non-defined security at her daughter's wedding, that will be taking place on her private island, Tashtego. Spenser takes Susan along with him and can't even explain to himself... let alone... to Susan... what his security job entails. On the day of the wedding... arch enemy "THE-GRAY-MAN" shows up as a guest... with no explanation or deep *"detecting"* work by Spenser... and from there we get senseless mass killings... what appears to be a ransom situation... without any immediate ransom request being made... and of course Spenser can't let go of the case even though he is no longer being paid.

Even Spenser's usual quota of sharp-snappy-funny quips are cut down to a minimum, but here's a couple of good ones: "IF YOU'RE GOING TO PRACTICE NEPOTISM, YOU MAY AS WELL KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY." And "SHE WAS CARRYING A PURSE THAT WOULD WORK AS A HAMMOCK FOR PYGMIES." And "ACCORDING TO RULE 4 IN SPENSER'S DETECTIVE FOR DUMMIES, IF YOU AREN'T GETTING ANYWHERE AND YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO, GO ANNOY SOMEBODY." The one great flash of former Parker street poetry occurred when he described the reverence that Ty-Bop a mob bosses killer had for Hawk: "HE WOULD KILL ANYTHING THAT TONY POINTED HIM TOWARD. BUT THAT ASIDE, HE ALWAYS SEEMED TO ADMIRE HAWK. HE NEVER SAID ANYTHING, BUT HE WATCHED HIM ALL THE TIME, THE WAY A SCHOOLYARD PLAYER WOULD WATCH MICHAEL JORDAN."

My suggestion for a future Spenser installment would be for Spenser to breakup with Susan, and then for Spenser, Hawk, and maybe one other respected "shooter" that Spenser calls on in time of need... go away to a mountain cabin to bond and unwind... and in the midst of booze and steaks... and sharing old stories... the cabin is surrounded by a group of bad guys whose lives Spenser and Hawk had made miserable in the past... and the boys have to fight to the death to survive.

This would be a lot more entertaining than listening to double entendre chit-chat while watching Susan take microscopic bites of her lettuce.

After 30 years, the Spenser novels may have reached their nadir. This isn't so much a book as it is an exercise in cutting and pasting boring, trivial and pedantic dialogue from earlier Spenser escapades. There is so much wrong with it that it's hard to know to begin....but how 'bout

- Spenser and Susan do not seem to have grown up on wit over all these years. I fully realize the books aren't moving along as swiftly as real time, yet time has indeed passed (as Spenser and Rita discuss, in another adolescent tete-a-tete) so there is some need for not only their relationship to have grown, but for their dialogue to resemble something even close to what real people might say in today's parlance. I still admire Parker's crisp, uncluttered sentences (though he is getting lazy with adverbs....) I just wish that WHAT they were saying didn't sound juvenile.

- Susan (as a character) is as thin as the scraps of food she eats. Does she have friends or interests other than fawning over her big hunk of a detective boyfriend? Not that I know of. At the end of the day (and after all these years) Parker has repeatedly broken the #1 rule of writing; "Show, don't tell." We are bombarded with reasons why Susan is great, thin, beautiful and brilliant, yet we never really see it.....

- This book in particular seems driven not by a writer with a "good yard" to tell, but by a lazy old fart with a deadline to meet and a marketing department which encouraged him to "put a little more violence up front."

- Other's have noted that Parker is now obsessively reusing characters. Personally, I'm fine meeting up with Healey, Belson and Quirk, along with Ty Bop and others in the Spenser ensemble...but what is driving me nuts is the recycling of character types, which have long been grist for his personal mill. You always have to have someone at a New England college and there's usually another "shrink" and some rich society types who are evil or clueless or both. Having worked in academia, Spenser "knows the type," but the problem is, he is now writing them as nothing but "types," not as real living, breathing characters....

- And that's the real problem. Spenser books have never really been about the story/plot. They were character studies with a great sense of glib humor and what we call "snarkiness" these days. But when the writing grows dry and you swear you've "read it all before," the book collapses. A good story can survive poor writing, but not the other way around...

Honestly, I hate to write all this, as I have been a fan for a very long time. But I've also read a lot more since then, and have found people who intrigue and delight me more. If you haven't read Henning Mankell, then put down the Parker books and get going. For until Susan moves to Alabama and starts a Bulimia clinic, I see no reason to return to Spenser's Boston....

Since the release of _The Godwulf Manuscript_ back in 1973, I have been fond of RBP's work, but it was _Catskill Eagle_ that turned me into a real Spenser fan. I have read everything Parker has written and I'm sorry to say that _Rough Weather_ will probably be my last.

Ever since the introduction of the Sunny Randall (Spenser in drag)and Jesse Stone series, I've increasingly felt like I was getting less and less "bang" for my buck --- not to mention the fact that the word count kept decreasing as the type size increased. But I kept on shelling out the dough...which also kept increasing.

Beginning several Spenser novels ago, I noticed Parker was not only relying on the same old characters - recycling them over and over again and apparently having decided to abandon the concept of introducing anyone new - but was also "crossing over" more and more (Spenser hooking up with colleagues of Sunny Randall and/or Jesse Stone, and vice versa). He also began to increasingly recycle dialogue (how many times do Spenser and Susan -- and occassionally Hawk --- need to have the same old conversation --- always over a meal ---about "Spenser's code" and what makes him different from Hawk or the Grey Man?

But _Rough Weather_ was the proverbial straw. I would venture to guess that there is not one line of original dialogue in the entire book. If one were to take the time to check, I believe you would probably find that 90% of _Rough Weather_ has already been published in previous RBP novels. The plot is thin, predictable, and completely unoriginal (I had the entire thing figured out by Chapter 4); Parker seems to be testing the limits of just how many old characters he can squeeze into one novelette (those who don't actually make an appearance are at least mentioned once or twice); and the action (what little there is)is contrived and boring. Even Hawk, who can usually be counted on to save a chapter in distress, is reduced to a mere caricature of himself --- whose most exciting moment comes when he's standing in a corner, gun held at his side, as he utters the memorable phrase, "Uh huh."

_Rough Weather_ is embarrassingly bad. I cannot help but wonder if RBP had anything to do with it (just as I am convinced that Tom Clancy did not write _Red Rabbit_ nor _Teeth of the Tiger_). Irregardless, this is the last RBP title I will waste my time and money on. I'm just grateful that I read it on my Kindle so it only cost $9.99 instead of $27.00.

If you _must_ read it, borrow it from a friend, or check it out from the library --- Parker doesn't deserve to profit from this drivel --- he's sold us out.

If you watch this space (and I certainly hope you do), you will know that Parker seems particularly interested in family these days, as his last few books, spanning all his current series, seem to revolve around how they behave towards each other. Rough Weather is no exception.

Spenser is hired by the oft-married temptress/socialite Heidi Bradshaw to be her "escort" at her daughter's pending wedding on the privately-owned paradise known as Tashtego Island. Spenser agrees to act as bodyguard on the condition that he is allowed to bring along his own "protection", Susan Silverman.

Upon arrival on the island, he sees a face from his past that brings him up short. That being the infamous Ruger, the Gray Man from Thin Air. Yup, the guy that nearly sent ol' Spens off to a dirt nap is back to deliver his own particular brand of threat to the proceedings, and it doesn't take long before that threat is fulfilled, and the wedding is disrupted by the inconvenient murder of the groom (for starters), and the kidnapping of the bride, all against the backdrop of the titular hurricane that blankets the island in a shield of wind, rain and darkness.

Parker stages these violent and complex proceedings in such a precise manner via Spenser's narration--we feel the tension, and our clothes feel damp from the storm's fury.

Once the storm has passed and Susan is safe, Spenser must deal with the guilt of failure to protect the victims, and it's this guilt is what drives him on after being fired by his client. Guilt over letting Ruger execute his plot and escape, and even deeper, for not killing Ruger back when he had a chance.

So he enlists Hawk, and a few other characters to help him figure out what exactly happened, all the while breaking things down with Susan, as he so often does--this time, with the added force of her involvement in the situation.

As he explores the murky world of the victims--nearly becoming one himself--and suspects, it becomes clear that Heidi Bradshaw was hiding things. No, really? And there's gambling in Casablanca? Shocking.

Parker's oft-noted skills for snappy dialogue are as sharp as ever in Rough Weather, and he takes a complicated story and tells it in his ever-entertaining style. No great revelations here, simply the things we love and expect from the author.

Spenser discovers some truths at the core of the crime that bring us to what's on Parker's mind about family, and these truths bring color to what might seem stock characters on both sides of the story.

It's these truths--how far some people will go to protect family, and how little others care about family--that also drive events in a fairly shocking conclusion.

It's a story for the faithful, certainly. Rough Weather breaks no new barriers, but it still delivers the goods we rely on Parker for, and after almost 40 years, that's no mean feat!!

If you have read most of Robert Parker's previous Spenser books, you know what you are in for. Familiar characters - Spenser, Hawk, Susan Silverman, Healy, Pearl, Belson, Tony Marcus, etc. This familiarity is not a bad thing. It actually is one of the main reasons I enjoy the Spenser books. You can count on witty repartee among Spenser, Susan, and Hawk. You know Spenser will toy with some big thug in a fight. You know attempts will be made on his life. You know you will be able to laugh at the typical behavior of Susan's dog Pearl. All of this is just great fun.

Rough Weather fits the pattern of the previous books. We even get the Gray Man back as the villain. All of the Spenser books are short, have numerous chapters, and can be read quickly. The temptation is always there to read just one more chapter before going to sleep. Just one more.

The specific plot really doesn't matter that much. In this one, Spenser is hired by a wealthy socialite to act as a bodyguard at her daughter's wedding at a private island off the coast. The Gray Man appears and all hell breaks loose with a kidnapping, murders, and a hurricane all going on at the same time. Spenser spends the rest of the book working his way through a web of lies to arrive at an interesting final solution.

Mr. Parker clearly has a successful pattern with the Spenser books, and Rough Weather fits right in. Read it. You'll enjoy it.

First on, let's focus on the positives: for almost four decades the Spenser stories have collectively been, without doubt, one of the greatest detective series ever. He and his allies (most notably his paramour Susan Silverman and his tougher-than-nails sidekick Hawk) have meted out their own special justice in over three dozen mysteries--most but not all in the Boston area.

Throughout this series Spenser's fans could always count upon his quick wit, fast hands, an unshakeable ethical code, and his "See It Through to the End" credo. Whether the cases involved a missing person, a cheating spouse, personal security, or even carrying out vengeance, Spenser's work always carried with it an ethical dilemma from which true justice would have to be extracted, with or without the consent of his employer.

I've been reading these novels ever since my late college years in the early 1970s ("The Godwulf Manuscript"), and I have always been enthused every time a new Spenser paperback hit the shelves. During the interim I felt I always got what I'd paid for: humor, adventure, a clever plot, and a compelling case that moored my guy in a quandary that required an unusual and clever resolution. And I loved Parker's spare writing style, one that always seemed to me to symbolize how Hemingway would have written had he a sense of humor.

That is, until recently. Not usually a naysayer, I've heard the complaints of others and yet I tried to ignore what they were saying: the formula is getting stale; there have been too many trips to the well; no new ground is being broken. But I hung in there...the books were still fun, and I'd rather spend my time inside Spenser's head, even on a bad day, than with most characters on their best.

But with "Rough Weather," I have to admit that I, too, am getting bored. It's not just that for the umpteenth time he's re-treading an old character, doing more or less a sequel. No, it's more than that. It's kind of a...well...a boredom has set in. Like so many other fans, I think Mr. Parker is just earning a paycheck.

As I read "Rough Weather" I once again watched as all the basic elements were wheeled out: the sexy repartee between Our Hero and the perpetually "ready for a roll in the hay" Ms. Silverman; the racially centered badinage between him and Hawk (whose most essential feature lately is to alternate his speaking style between that of a street thug and a college graduate); the inevitable punch out scene where our Hunk knocks out a tough guy; and the women who throw themselves at him but he remains true to Dear Old Sue.

But it goes further than even that: in "Rough Weather," the antagonist doesn't even remain consistent within his own characterization. He's appeared before, and up until now the most interesting thing about him has been his sheer professionalism; he is maddeningly thorough and NEVER makes a mistake. In fact, he's the one foe who has come closest to ending Spenser's reign. But by the end of this novel he's behaving like a sniveling fool.

And yes, everything HAS been done before. We know that Spenser is going to run up against some amalgamate of evil corporate types; sexually frustrated women who spin out of control when he walks by; pseudo intellectuals who appear to know it all but are only a Spenser quip away from a humbling experience; tough brutes who would scare the pants off you and me, but Spenser and Hawk routinely dispatch like they're swatting flies, and the perennially steamy repartee between Spenser and Susan, who falls into a swoon with him about a dozen times a book.

Unfortunately, I think, after all of this time, that P.I. Spenser may finally be facing the one fundamental foe he cannot vanquish, the one enemy he cannot overcome: a languid Robert B. Parker, who has gotten too comfortable himself, and is content with doing what Our Hero never would: phoning it in.

This Susan silliness has to go. Does Parker have an editor? Fire him/her. They aren't helping.

I am sure this was not written by RBP. The language is not consistent with any of the previous Spenser novels - Hawk sounds like a one-dimensional caricature of himself. Spenser sounds like a low-rent knock off of Sam Spade - his gratuitous dismissal of the usage of an umbrella contains a vulgarity one would not associate with a poetry-quoting renaissance man.
I'm sad to say I was disappointed with the novel.

Spenser is hired to be present at a wedding. His suspicions are aroused by the presence at this wedding of an old opponent of his, the Gray Man. Then a lot of weird things happen, The Gray Man pulls off a botched up mishmash of a kidnapping of the bride involving killing the groom, a storm prevents the take-off of the getaway helicopter, Spenser is used to carry the bride out to the copter, he kills his guard, frees Susan from the room where the wedding crowd is being held. One of Parker's defects in his writing is having Spenser think first and only of Susan, let everything else go,and so it is here. Of course this lets the story progress and the Gray Man gets away. Now the story can develop.
Spenser is let go by the bride's mother who hired him. He keeps on the case and starts digging.Several murders occur to enable the kidnapping,some not necessary to steal the bride. Spenser is not killed, of course, to keep the story going. He investigates the mother, finds her true identity, works with the local police, brings in Susan, Hawk, and talks with The Gray Man. The FBI is involved as well. Spenser considers the kidnapping a cover for some other reason, it is not up to The Gray Man's standards, More people get killed, Spenser is contacted by the Gray Man and they make a deal. The gray Man walks and Spenser lets him, despite all the killings, Parker has done it again, I think he could not find a reasonable ending so he selected a bad one and played it through. The story is one of the worst ones Parker has ever plotted.

I am a long time RBP fan. That is now said. However, this book should have been 3 chapters long. One in which he gets hired, one to go to the wedding see Gray Man, kill him and then a wrap up chapter. Despite the fact that the rest of the book is pretty standard (if not tired) RBP Spenser, the whole book does not work because of the beginning. It is his JOB to be there for his employer. Yet Spenser drags Susan along to his job, sees his Arch Enemy and does NOTHING!!!! What the hell did he think GM was there for?! At bare minimum Susan should have been sent home and Hawk called in to deal with this. Also, wayyyyyy too much Susan. It would be OK if she would do something. By now it is like watching paint dry when she is in a chapter. Let something happen to her like some of the previous novels. Or better yet, make a couple of books with barely a reference to her at all.

Thank goodness, I got this one from the Library. I give it two stars just because of RBP. Don't waste your money.

Quick fix for most of this book:

If RBP had not let The Gray Man be seen at the start of the wedding and let it be a surprise later that it was him, the book would have worked and everyone would be happy (at least I would have). I just cant believe ole Spense let it happen that way.