Customer Reviews

Taming a Sea-Horse (A Spenser Novel)

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"Taming a Sea-Horse" finds Spenser returning to simpler pursuits after the imitation James Bond heights of our hero's previous story, "A Catskill Eagle." Susan Silverman is back in Spenser's life with minimal mention of the hell she put him through in the last couple of books when she was off in California. But they are very happy together, although they now find very little time to do any real cooking. The problem this time around is an old one revisited: April Kyle, the teenage prostitute Spenser saved in "Ceremony" has left the call girl service of Patricia Utley and has started turning tricks for Robert Rambeaux, the man she supposedly loves. Spenser does a little investigating but before he gets too deep into the matter April disappears, Rambeaux is beaten up by somebody other than Spenser, and one of the hookers our hero intereviewed is murdered. Once again, there is much more to the case than meets the eye.

This is an intimate Spenser novel, which was certainly a wise move on Robert B. Parker's part after the epic scale of its predecessor. At the end of "Ceremony," Spencer and Susan were planning on taking April to meet Mrs. Utley because they could not come up with a better solution and we could only guess at what would become of the young girl. Now the gap of the last four years has been filed in and our hero has another chance to help the young girl, whom I suspect might be on her way to being the surrogate daughter in Spenser's growing symbolic family unit. While "Taming a Sea-Horse" might seem to cover some of the ground Robert B. Parker has covered before, there is always some sort of twist, and it is not understatement to say that this time around the story ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Robert B. Parker, Taming a Sea-Horse (Delacorte, 1986)

One of the fun things about Robert Parker's Spenser novels is that way folks keep popping up and making Spenser's life miserable. In this case, the poppee is April Kyle, a prostitute Spenser encountered a few years before. That story didn't end to anyone's satisfaction, least of all Spenser's. Now it's time for him to find out why. April has left the employ of the madam with whom Spenser set her up to turn tricks for her new boyfriend, a woodwind player struggling through Julliard. Or so everyone's been told. Spenser starts asking around, and the more he asks, the less he finds out. Typical, huh?

In no time, one of April's associates who Spenser talked to is dead, and the pimp has had his face rearranged. There's more to this than a runaway streetwalker. Enough "more," at least, for another Spenser novel.

This isn't one of Parker's more elegant works, but then, a bad Spenser is still better than most anything else. It has all the hallmarks of Robert Parker. There's some cooking, some literature, a lot of snappy one-liners, and inherent readability. What's missing is the necessity to down the whole thing in one long swallow that pervades such Spenser gems as A Catskill Eagle and Early Autumn. But that's comparable to a pizza with one slice gone; the rest will still taste good. ***

Is Susan the only woman in Spenser's life who isn't a hooker? I know I'm reading the books out of order, but just in grabbing them off the shelves randomly-Ceremony, Mortal Stakes, Thin Air, Taming a Seahorse all feature Spenser riding to the rescue of once or current hookers. Oh well, in this one April Kyle, the teenage girl that Spenser and Susan thought would have a nice life as a prostitute disappears from the fancy upscale house they put her in and is doomed to work the streets. While searching for her, Spenser meets ***gasp in amazement*** another young hooker. Naturally she's not a coked-up, used up street walker, she's another in Spenser's long line of beautiful street corner girls. The girl ends up dead which leads to Spenser beating up her father, tracking her to a Hefner/Flynt clone whose men's clubs are actually highclass whorehouses, and to the club's Caribbean resort which leads to another gorgeous hooker and so on. Who killed the hooker and her pimp? Don't know, April, I assume, will go back to hooking in a manner Spenser prefers. I found the ending very puzzling-almost like Parker had to maintain a page count and he had to finish it up with no time for tying things up. There were about 20 more pages of story could have been wrung out of this one.

I'm ashamed to admit this about my reading weakness. I did overcome it, given full use of the gift of Parker's skill as an author. The confession:

The first few paragraphs of TAMING A SEA-HORSE worked more as the wrong end of a magnet than a draw into the story. My immediate, automatic response was I didn't want to immerse my emotions again into the heartbreaking, depressing world of Patricia Utley and April Kyle.

And then the save:

Reading into the story a couple pages, I was hooked into Spenser's world and cares. I wanted to know why April had gone to the different call agency, and how Spenser might convince her to return to Utley's more realistic, kinder "retirement program." And, the conversation with Utley was engrossing, about the various angles of Call Girls' dreams, the sour and the creme.

I was also caught by Spenser's description of compulsions and controls (successes and failures) of his rampant appetites, in this case for martinis over lunch, through lunch, concluding with a healthy cherry cheesecake wallow.

Of course Spenser's first conversation with April over a noon lunch, which was breakfast for her, was full of reader bait, as was his first exchange with April's high-brow musician pimp. With Spenser's satiric takes on the seedy sides of NYC ambiance swirled into the mix, I willingly gave up any resistance to sinking into the unique plot mix in book # 13 in the series. Given the sensitive ending (and the increasingly engrossing ride to it, youthful shrugs included) I'm really glad that resistance would have been futile here.

Susan and Hawk didn't show up until about half through the plot, but their scenes were prime, especially if a reader has come upon them in sequence, through the storms of the previous novels. A special playful newness to Susan and Spenser's relationship had emerged, and I could feel the subtle pride and quiet warmth in Hawk, which had expanded due to the intense intimacy of soul ripping situations through which they had passed in absolute commitment to each other, in previous novels.

Due to the delay of entrance of Susan and Hawk, though, readers were again allowed the ambiance of the private eye walking alone, for another while. Instead of reeking of loneliness, though, this time disgust and frustration fumed in the solitary detective who realistically makes very little progress in his games, enduring endless hours and hour-packed days of tedious observation, and expensive exploration into seeming dead ends. Parker does Spenser's boredom shuffle to perfection.

The plot heat-up (from the appealing gumshoe dragging) was gradual in a satisfying way (with literary style and bits of great humor), and effective in easing me into reading a few hours in the middle of the night... thinking I would just read long enough to get sleepy and fall back asleep. Sure. Finished the book first, then went back to sleep, after another 30 minutes tumbling the story around in my mind, feeling a healing contentment about what Spenser accomplished in this one, even if it was just a novel.

I was haunted by knowing, first hand from my experiences in police work, about the young girls who would never have a Spenser to save them. Some of them would have someone; some of them would somehow save themselves.

Linda Shelnutt

In this story, Spenser is once again on a noble mission and people are killed, but unlike other Spenser stories, the plot didn't grab me. Furthermore, the dialog lacked the wittiness found in the other Spenser stories. He was much more subdued, almost fatalistic. Even the scenes with Hawk lacked the dynamic and witty dialog that makes their relationship so unique.
April Kyle, the teenage prostitute Spenser saved in "Ceremony", has left the high-class brothel run by Patricia Utley and is now on the street for a man named Robert, who is a student at Juilliard. Spenser easily tracks her down and she tells him that her and Robert are in love and she is hooking in order to put him through school. Spenser investigates and learns that Robert is in love with many different girls and is in fact the pimp for a collection of hookers. Spenser spends some professional (his) time with Ginger Bucky, another girl in Robert's stable. He finally breaks into her hardened heart to learn that her father repeatedly raped her before he sold her to a brothel.
When April disappears and Ginger is murdered, Spenser investigates the seedy world of prostitution, where girls are sold and there are various levels of the trade. Along the way, Spenser makes a trip to Lindell, Maine to have a chat with Ginger's father and to prove to him that he is not the toughest man in Lindell. Other people are killed as Spenser follows the trail of Ginger in the hope that it will lead him to April. Eventually it does, as Spenser makes a deal with the head of a major prostitution ring to get her back.
Throughout the story, Spenser has his ego reinforced by Susan Silverman, as he questions what he is doing and his attempts to right some of the wrongs of the world. There is no great climactic ending, his meeting with the prostitution lord is little more than a swap of one person for another and a decision by Spenser to largely ignore Ginger's death. The book ends with April back in Spenser's arms and they start making simple plans as to what they will do next. Unlike other Spenser books, this one is dark and unsatisfying. The dialog and story line are weak, as they drag you from one slightly interesting situation to another.

Enjoy Robert Parker books a lot. Spenser is wonderful and so is Hawk. This was not my favorite story line it was fun and a good read. I am a big fan of Parker and am sorry for his death and the loss of his characters, humor and stories.

Robert B Parker is the greatest author of all time as measured by quality and quantity. Hemingway, Dostoyevski, Faulkner, et. al. wrote 2 or 3 great books, each of which even Mr. Parker would acknowledge superior to any of his works. But no author has ever consistently produced high quality entertainment virtually every year for over 30 years! No one. This book is not his best, but it is a good example of how he can call upon old characters from former books and weave a new tale of humor, suspense and just plain entertainment. Raymond Chandler said his objective was to write mystery novels that readers could enjoy even if the last ten pages were missing. Parker has acheived that objective more than 30 times.

This book Is another novel about the beloved April Kyle. If you read the first book Ceremony you leave with a feeling that you want only the best for April and you wish she could catch a break in life. Well in this book it just gets worse but in the end you get the feeling that she might just finally give up her current life of prostitution. This book I found to be another good Spencer novel and I couldn't put it down.

As are all of Robert B Parker's novels, this is a witty, and well-written detective novel. The settings, sights, smells and people in his novels can all be imagined due to his descriptive interpretation of the stories he writes.

This book was in great shape for its age, and arrived in a reasonable amount of time (from England to Georgia, USA).