Customer Reviews

The Widening Gyre (Spenser Novels (Dell))

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the 10th book in the Spenser series.

Spenser is hired as a guard on the U.S. Senate campaign of ultra-Christian Meade Alexander. He soon finds out that Alexander is being blackmailed with the threat of making public a video of his wife in bed with a young man. Alexander truly loves his wife and would rather give up his political aspirations than humiliate her.

Susan is in the midst of a one-year internship in Washington D.C. for her Ph.D. Spenser goes to D.C. on his case and finds Susan different in significant ways. "Her face was as it had always been: intricate, beautiful, expressive. In the last year somehow it had also become faintly remote, as if always she were listening to a whisper, barely audible, from someplace else: her name, maybe, tiny and hushed."

Spenser is also very sensitive concerning the middle-aged women he sees having sex with four "college boys" who are secretly taping the rendesvous. "These women were real, with the fine roughening of skin here and there, the tiny sag at the breast, the small folds across the stomach that real women, and men, have. . . . That kind of vulnerability shouldn't be handed around. It was for someone who loved you and was vulnerable too."

I listened to the unabridged audio cassette of this book, while traveling around town. I prefer not to get the condensed versions of the books where you miss the development of the story and characters and get only the basics. While this book did get a little too sentimental, I have to say that it was for the better. To get the insight into Spenser and how he feels in lieu of always getting the stony detective that defeats all his enemies and solves the crime was interesting. I thought the story itself was intriguing. Okay it wasn't as complicated as plots can be, but I definitely didn't find my interest wandering. I have read one Spenser book and listened to a couple of others on tape, and I have to say that this book will keep me going. If you haven't read or listened to a Spenser book before I do not feel that you will be lost out jumping into this one.

I was driving down a narrow Maine highway. A blue sky, nearly cloudless, hung over the low forest. I wasn't nursing a bottle of Irish whisky. My stomach rumbled thanks to the low quality fried clams I'd eaten the night before. I spotted two overweight ladies in baseball t-shirts on a roadside porch. A sign read "Yard Sale". I had to stop. Amidst the junk and used kids' toys, I found two novels by Robert B. Parker. I bought them. Set me back fifty cents. What did "Gyre" mean, I wondered.

I didn't really find out, though "vortex" could be a choice. A tough Boston detective named Spenser gets hired by a born-again Christian politician to provide security. In Massachusetts ? Running for the Senate ? You know something is weird right from the start. I grabbed my mug of tea (Lipton's) and headed upstairs to read more. Yeah, this guy is tough, totes a piece, and can beat up any two hoodlums without breaking a sweat. But he has two lovers, a woman and a man. He believes in love. He reads Thomas Hobbes. Wonders about life and death. And other oldfashioned questions. He might be the last othe old school, but at the same time, he's pretty liberated too. A paradox. The politician's wife gets caught on videotape having sex with a young dude. He ain't her husband. Duhh. So, the tape falls into the hands of the opposition. Or so it seems. Spenser sorts it all out on a trip down to Washington. His clothes, his drinks, and his meals are all very much part of the scene. Back in Boston, he confronts the bad guys in their own den. It all comes together in the last chapters. Anais Nin once said, "We see things not as they are but as we are." Spenser is a lot like that and it will all depend on you too as to how you like this book. I liked the style, but this sort of novel reminds me of "Naked Gun". You enjoy and forget. Go to it. Don't omit some Irish whisky. Or tea.

Spenser is hired to watch over a Senatorial candidate in this short book. Meade Alexander is a true-blue fundamentalist Christian and his adoring wife is the perfect politician's wife - beautiful and poised. But, as it turns out, she has a dark secret. She tends to get drunk and commit . . . indiscretions. Meade, as it turns out, is being blackmailed, and he asks Spenser to find a way to stop it. Meade does not want his wife to ever know about the blackmail, or even to find out that he knows about her indiscretions.

Spenser unravels the threads that lead him to a drug ring and what appears to be a flourishing black-mail circle. Pulling on the loose threads brings him, unfortunately, to the attention of some very dangerous people.

Spenser is off-balance through a good deal of this book, as Susan Silverman is away, working on her doctorate and this leaves Spenser feeling like he is without his center.

A strong showing in the Spenser story line.

This book explores the changes relationships go through while delivering the action/adventure Spenser fans crave. Finally some changes are occuring in his relationship with the too perfect Susan Silverman; this portrayal of her as perfection personified has palled a long time ago. Not enough Hawk though; need more Hawk.

This one played the neon-light-blink, moaning-blues song of the lonely P.I., but with a sugar plum twist of Spenser's ideal of Romantic Love oozing out-of-the-funk. Susan cast a long shadow in the background until Spenser drew her into his Spotlight midway through the plot. Prior to Susan's entrance, The Master P.I. had walked alone. Not even the Hawk had flown there, except for a cool cameo in the plot conclusion. Spenser narrated the soliloquy scene so well at times that the style in THE WIDENING GYRE, # 10 in series, read like a diary dealing with the sad refrain of "Susan's away" (she was in Washington DC, getting her PhD, developing her "Me").

When Susan did arrive in plot ... actually Spenser went to DC were she was solidly steeped into her "schooling"; stuck-in-the-mud of its professional status of mining/mixing ... she and Spencer exchanged a few thought provoking conversations, doodling boarders around Cynicism and Romantic Love. With interesting irony, Susan was the cynic, interpreting each human action/feeling as self-serving. Those conversations, containing several pages of quotable-keepers, set a large segment of the baseline for the evolving Silverman/Spenser mystique. (See chapters 19 & 22, in particular.)

Well prior to those scenes, eighteen-year-old Paul had arrived at Spenser's apartment to share the Thanksgiving holiday, and zinged Spenser with a few passages of "blow-your-socks-off" wisdom about intimacy breaking down Spenser's previously well-contained-and-clearly-coded "me-ness." If nothing else had given me a clue, I would have known Spenser was in a MOOD in this one (entertaining to the reader though not to him) by the dull description of food available, and resultant location of the "Be Thankful" dining event.

I'm glad I didn't miss the touching (and telling) comment Spenser made to one of the Grannies involved in the voyeurism scenes, as he walked away from her after having "saved her bacon" (though no cast iron skillets sizzled in this one).

I enjoyed riding along through Spenser's daily diary submissions about booze and caffeine, describing the ticking of minutes as he struggled to stretch the timing and flavor of his culinary "vices" ... which The Experts had proclaimed bad one year (or decade), good the next. This series is a fascinating vehicle for recalling the years when certain habits emerged with stamps of sanction or sacrilege. From my observations, the 70's were the time of shuffling every card of "Do" and "Don't"; sorting and re-sorting the ups and downs of each trump of life-and-taste, until Flavor Itself, along with Human Nature were condemned as Ultimate Evils.

Such a deal. And that makes sense why?

Sigh. Maybe a decade will arrive in which sanity, or even a useful sentience will emerge from the abused bowels of the human race. Maybe the pseudo varieties of Science will slither down the drains in the dungeons of drudgery, and what's left to pick up from The School floor will clean up into something based on truth instead of in alternate fad pushing (with punishment, $$$, and fame the partially hidden intents).

(An informative, intriguing series of Amazon Shorts is currently available which addresses evolutions around some of this thinking, which was upchucked and overturned in the 70's, then poked and picked to death in the 80's and 90's. In the 00's, we seem to be in a stupor of gyration to the sloshes of aftermath. Is it any wonder this is the outcome of the age which coined "Duh"? The series of which I'm speaking was presented by scientists Gregory Benford and Michael Rose. I've recently reviewed the first 5 of their series of Amazon Shorts.)

I was intrigued by Spenser's play on "Gyre" in his book-front-dedication and quote from William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming." Parker asks, "Can the center hold, or not." That was the question. Spenser seemed to be dramatizing that it can. He added a how and why.

WIDENING GYRE was a classy offering in this cultural landmark of a series. I very much enjoyed the slight-lime-twist on the classic "voice" of the low-key, poor-me, lonely P. I. My thanks to Parker for staying true-to-soul and avoiding another same-ole detective series. That well-established, long-trod genre has abundantly and sensually filled a void with lip-smacking (and bone-shattering) satisfaction. But for me, The World's need for Spenser was/is like its need for gravity.

Bless the same-ole, along with the unique (maybe they need each other),
Linda Shelnutt

I have always been a Robert Parker fan. This is one of his earlier publications. It sets up some of the characters which he uses in later books. This is a good read. Spenser's wit and comebacks are as strong as ever. Hawk comes in late in the book and is at his best. Wish I had read this book earlier. I would have understood some of the other characters better: Vinnie, Susan, Joe Broz. Good enjoyable read!

ROBERT PARKER PROBABLY WRITES THE BEST DIALOGUE OF THE MANY THRILLER AND CRIME WRITERS I READ. ALWAYS GET A GOOD CHUKLE FROM THE HERO'S REMARKS. HIS PARAMOR ALSO HAS GREAT LINES.

BESIDES ALL THAT, HIS STORY LINE IS GREAT AND IT IS A GREAT FAST READ. I AM 87 YEARS OLD SO IN ORDER TO BE A FAST READ IT HAS TO BE VERY GRIPPING.

ALSO, THIS IS LEAONARD EISENSTEIN WRITING THIS REVIEW. PLEASE ELIMINATE MY DECEASED WIFES\'S NAME FROM THESE REVIEWS. IT HAS A GHOSTLY CONNOTATION.

A great early Spenser novel. An entertaining short read for a rainy day. You meet Hawk for the first time and learn a bit of Spensers history. Keeps your interest piqued for the entire book.

I sound like a broken record reviewing Parker's Spenser series. I have yet to see a poor one. THE WIDENING GYRE is very good, worth your time, but again I always encourage new readers, read the series in order. It's a great total package. This story has Spenser hired to protect a senate candidate. Of course, there are problems, like his wife's sex tape, owned by a mobster's son. Quirk, Hawk, Silverman, they are all here. ENJOY.