The Widening Gyre (Spenser Novels (Dell)) (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "I was nursing a bottle of Murphy's Irish Whiskey, drinking it from the neck of the bottle sparingly, and looking down from the window of..." (more)
Key Phrases: granny party, two stiffs, Joe Broz, Gerry Broz, Ronni Alexander (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The adoring wife of a senatorial candidate has a smile as sweet as candy and dots her "i's" with little hearts. A blond beauty, she is the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she has a little problem with sex and drugs--a problem someone has managed to put on videotape.

The big boys figure a little blackmail will put her husband out of the race. Until Spenser hops on the candidate's bandwagon.

But getting back the tape of the lady's X-rated indiscretion is a nonstop express ride to trouble--trouble that is deep, wide and deadly.

"A thriller all the way." (Seattle Times) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

5 1-hour cassettes --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Dell; Reissue edition (June 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440195357
• ISBN-13: 978-0440195351
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #53,844 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 12 in The Spenser Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sensitive, January 20, 2000

By	Harmoni (United States of America) - See all my reviews

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."

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Getting hooked on Spenser, September 29, 2000

By	Mark S. Winger (Wood Dale, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Widening Gyre (Audio Cassette)

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.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I Spin my Tales (and Bust a few Chops) As I Walk Alone Through Night Drenched Streets." - The Private Eye., January 17, 2007

By	Linda G. Shelnutt "Author" (Hotchkiss, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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