Customer Reviews

Valediction

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a heart-wrenching story which begins with Spenser attending Susan's Ph.D. ceremony at Harvard. That night, she informs Spenser that she's leaving immediately for San Francisco, where she has accepted a job. Spenser is stunned. My tears flowed freely for him several times during the opening pages of the story.

Paul (_Early Autumn_) stays with Spenser that summer. It is quite touching to see the concern expressed for Spenser by Paul, Hawk, Belson and Quirk. There are very tender scenes in which each gives Spenser support. Throughout his days, Spenser thinks of Susan, e.g., when he looks at a clock, he automatically converts to Pacific time or thinks, "Susan isn't even awake yet."

Paul asks Spenser to take on a case for Tommy Banks, the choreographer who hired Paul to dance in his small company. Spenser checks out Tommy's allegation that his girlfriend was kidnapped at gunpoint by a religious cult.

Spenser eventually goes out with Linda, the art director across the street he has flirted with through their office windows. Even though he falls in love with her, he will wait to see what Susan wants to do before giving up on her and giving his all to somebody else.

Spenser is at death's door near the story's end, but he doesn't allow anyone to tell Susan about it, because he does not want her to return to him simply because he's hurt.

Spenser's honor is fully restored in this story, as we learn that he had apologized to Susan for sleeping with Candy Sloan in _A Savage Place_.

Perhaps I'm boring but Parker hit a grand slam with me when creating the dynamic duo of Spenser and Hawk. While we still have the terrific tandem here, Parker throws a few curves at the reader in Valediction.

Right out of the box, you know this is going to be a nerve-wracking story. In the opening scene, Spenser has just come from Susan's Ph.D. grad ceremony when she drops the atomic bomb that she is moving to San Francisco for a new job. This sets the stage for Spenser's moods throughout this book.

Spenser's friend, Paul, asks him to look into a wherein Paul's boss, Tommy Banks, believes that his girlfriend has been kidnapped and brainwashed by a religous cult. While we learn that Banks may not be the most honest citizen, it really doesn't matter. For if you are in Spenser's way in this novel, you are in grave danger.

On a lighter note, Spenser meets, goes out and seduces the woman he has flirted with across the street via flirtatious smiles from their respective office windows. This relationship takes on a more serious tone but, can it last? Will Susan return to Spenser?

Parker takes you down a variety of paths in this one. Different for Parker but a good read.

As soon as I read the stanza from John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" telling us how "lover's love cannot admit absence, beaus it doth remove those things which elemented it," I knew our hero was in trouble. "Valediction," the eleventh of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, begins with a primal shocker as Susan Silverman receives her doctorate from Harvard and then announces she has taken a job in California, she will call but not give him her address, and walks out of our hero's life. As you can imagine, the impact on Spenser is profound, and while Paul Giacomin and Hawk are there for support, there is apparently little they can do. How profound an impact? Well, throughout the book Spenser drinks Irish whiskey instead of beer and the only thing I remember him making in the kitchen is a salad. Paul is there for dialectical engagements, but Spenser just sinks deeper into the abyss. But you know that a case is going to present itself which will seek to snap him out of it and that this case will provide a not too subtle counterpoint to Susan's abandonment.

Not surprisingly the case comes from Paul. His dance instructor claims that his girlfriend was kidnapped by the "Bullies," a fanatic religious sect. Spenser does not care about Tommy Banks or Sherry Spellman (that will come later), but he takes the case for Paul's sake. Even though he is barely going through the motions he will find out where Sherry is staying and will take more than a passing interest in the rather odd practices of the Reorganized Church of the Redemption. The problem is that our hero is nowhere near being at the top of his game and for once he is more than a step behind for most of the game with very costly results. Meanwhile things continue to go from bad to worse with Susan, and when Spenser connects with Linda, the woman he has been waving at across the street from his office window for several months, he is pretty much going through the motions there as well. Still, Spenser going through the motions is still above average, whether we are talking detective skills or affairs of the heart.

In retrospect we can see the groundwork laid for this cataclysmic split in the previous novels, but the foreshadowing was subtle enough that Susan's sudden actions sure come as a shock. But the hallmarks of this series, in addition to Spenser's caustic wit and pugilistic skills, have always been our hero's introspective and progressive character set against plots that over something different each time around, which does necessitate to my mind reading the books in order. "Valediction" is far and away the most painful Spenser novel and it certainly speaks to the very real possibility that worst things can happen down the road if that was not already clear to us. What this really underscores is that Parker is successfully fighting against the forces that compel many writers to repeat their best work, mainly because there is a history to this character and his relationships with the people in his life without slipping into the demeaning level of being a soap opera. That does not mean that Spenser is played on the operatic level, but it is certainly pointed in the right direction.

Spenser is without a doubt as tough as they come. However, he also can be as sappy as they come, with emotional vulnerabilities that can get him killed. The book opens with Spenser and Susan Silverman attending commencement at Harvard, where she is awarded a Ph. D in clinical psychology. Shortly after this event, Susan informs him that she is moving to Los Angeles in an attempt to be alone for awhile. Spenser is devastated, and Paul Giacomin moves in with him in an attempt to help him through the crisis. Hawk and Spenser's other friends do what they can, but he has lost much of his will to live.
He is asked to investigate the disappearance of a woman, which leads him to an unusual religious cult. Nothing is as it seems and Spenser makes mistakes that nearly get him killed. This book describes him as a powerful, ruthless and yet very vulnerable person. Parker takes the vulnerability to the edge of believability, but wisely pulls back from that point. Despite his anguish and lack of interest in living, Spenser is still a formidable fighting machine, wisecracking with friends and foes alike.
Spenser beds a woman who works near him, and afterward he sleeps for the first time since Susan left. However, that relationship ends when Spenser kills four of the five killers sent to eliminate him. Unlike Susan, this woman cannot accept the fact that Spenser is forced to kill people in his line of work.
This is a Spenser book that many will dislike and others will consider their favorite. The romantic vulnerability of Spenser has always been there, but in this book it is greatly expanded. If you like romance, then you will enjoy it. However, if your tastes are more for the action, then this may be one of your least favorite novels in the series.

This book leads into my favorite spenser, A Catskill Eagle, but is excellent all alone. This time we see Spenser after Susan has left him and he's tortured by her absence, not really sure he wants to live anymore, he gets sloppy at his job. His dreams when he is under the knife are very powerful. There are many great Spenser novels in his thirty-year history but in terms of character development he changes more through Valediction and A Catskill Eagle than he does in the other 28 books combined. This book also has the best action/survival scene in the whole series when an attempt is made by five men on Spenser's life, his actions are CHARACTER-DEFINING in a way a million words of dialogue can't convey.

Robert B. Parker, Valediction (Delacorte, 1982)

One of the best things that can be said about Valediction is that it sets up the events in one of the best Spenser novels to date, A Catskill Eagle. That alone is enough to make it worth reading. Its also a little heaver on The Continuing Saga of Spenser and Susan than many Spenser novels; judge as you will and buy accordingly. Somewhere beneath all that, theres a mystery waiting to happen. In this case, Spenser is hired by one of his foster childs dance instructors to find said instructors girlfriend, whom he believes has been kidnapped by a sect of religious extremists. The story sounds wonky from the beginning, but what seems a little off at first ends up being stranger than anyone involved ever imagined.

The cast list reads rather like a Spensers Greatest Hits novel. Almost everyone in here has popped up before in a Spenser novel, from kids to hoods. The framework of the characters is already set up, and the plot pretty much writes itself. Its empty calories, the kind of stuff youd never catch the main character eating. However, this book is less about the mystery therein than it is about Spenser himself and how his changing relationship with Susan affects his own outlook on life. It sets the book apart somewhat, and that, combined with the events in the next book it sets up, makes this one a worthwhile addition to the canon. ***

This is the book in which Susan Silverman ~ that's Dr. Silverman to you and me ~ leaves Spenser for the West Coast, freedom, and the attempt to be someone apart from Spenser. The attempt, of course, miserably fails, as is revealed in "A Catskill Eagle". Spenser does actually have a legitimate case in this book, at least at the beginning it is legitimate; after a while it becomes a cat and mouse game, and it is no longer clear who is playing with whom. Throughout the whole novel Parker explores, to a degree, what it means to love someone: Spenser loves Susan; Spenser loves Linda, but will drop her for Susan if he can; Susan loves Spenser, but has to be away from his completeness to become complete herself; Sherry loves Tommy, but organises his death; Winston loves his Church but uses it for drug-dealing. How are we to understand all this love? This is the question Parker wants us to ponder as we dig through the depths of Boston society. It is unusual for him to be posing philosophical questions in this way, as opposed to the regular quesions of life and death (Will Spenser kill or be killed?); i quite like the departure, especially as the questions never subordinate the plot but grow out of it properly. A pleasant afternoon's read (as what Parker isn't?).

I am newly arrived at Robert B Parker's Spenser books and have been reading them avidly now for a few weeks (9 in , plenty to go). I just read 'Valediction' and then caught your previous reviewer's comments. I can't agree. As an avid US crime/P.I. book reader, there are very few by the 'major' writers that I don't like, but they all have a different approach and each spends more or fewer pages developing the main charater's personality. I love the Connelly 'Bosch' character and am now catching up with the earlier novels, I have tracked the Kellerman 'Delaware' novels from the beginning. The point I wanted to make is that each can tell a great story (very seldom that they fall down on plot) each can comfortably and believably carry over the main characters development from novel to novel, and so on. The great thing I am finding about Parker is that (in trying to catch up on all the earlier novels I missed) I can read them in one or two sittings and Parker has this great ability to skip from scene to scene (and ensure the reader knows what has happened) without a great amount of explanatory detail and to nail emotions which resonate with the reader without extensive analysis. And he is very funny - laugh out loud funny.

I feel really blessed to have found this guy - 'Valediction' is an emotional and physical roller coaster and I can't wait for 'A Catskill Eagle' - looks like another sleepless night tonight

This is one of my favorites of Parker's Spenser books, with a lot of Spenser's personal life and personality coming through -- it really brings Spenser's personality to the forefront, testing him through his relationship with Susan. If you're a fan of the regular characters (Hawk, Paul, Susan) this is a good one for that, plus a great story underneath.

*But* do yourself a favor and don't get the Kindle version. It is rife with errors, particularly a very annoying type where multiple paragraphs get put together, eliminating a line break. When this happens in the middle of unattributed dialog (over a dozen times before I stopped counting) it stops the story cold while you figure out who is saying what. That's why I had to rate this excellent story a mere two stars. Get the dead tree version instead, you won't be sorry.

My second Parker book in less than a month, and it's a bit confusing. This one is the 11th in the Spenser series.

The mystery is intricate and clever and unexpected--Spenser is hired to rescue an actress who's been reportedly abducted by a cult. Finding her, figuring out what's going on, and who's behind it is a story that's full of twists and turns and just brilliant.

But then there's the personal story, and it's just way too close to the one in Trouble in Paradise, which is a different series, to allow me to enjoy it. Spenser's long-term girlfriend Susan has just been awarded her PhD, and has announced that she's moving to San Francisco. Whereupon they embark on the identical relationship as Jesse Stone and his ex-wife Jenn: obsessed with each other, unable to let each other go, but sleeping with other people and each other. It's identical, right down to the details of Spenser/Stone admitting to other lovers that he's still hoping to go back to Susan/Jenn eventually and being brave and stalwart in the face of emotional angst.

Really, I wouldn't have minded it--would probably have enjoyed it, even--in one book, or one series. And maybe it's my own fault for having read the two books in the same month. But putting identical "romantic" relationships in two different series makes me think that the author sees it as ideal or common, and I can't quite believe it's either.

Of course, Trouble in Paradise was written 14 years after Valediction, so if I'd read them when they were written, no doubt it wouldn't have bothered me at all. I'm still not sure why I read them in this order--normally, if I have more than one book by an author in my TBR pile, I'm almost obsessive about reading them in the order in which they were written.

Ah, well. Water under the bridge. I still liked this, and I'll still read more Parker books. I think I'll just be a little more careful about trying to read them in order from now on.