Robert B. Parker - Small Vices

Pros: A Spenser novel is typically much better than the average detective novel....
Cons: ...but this isn't Parker's best work so call it average.

Robert B. Parker, America’s greatest living detective novel writer, continues to churn out stories at a remarkable clip. Explaining to one interviewer that he writes for a living, Parker publishes several books a year. Most contain snappy dialogue and ...

Pros: Parker's style; the powerful bond between Spenser and Hawk; surprising realism.
Cons: Parker's tales are a bit predictable to those who read him regularily.

Robert B. Parker's great-American detective, Spenser, reaches a new level in Small Vices. For those who have grown older with the sleuth, it comes as no surprise that he is willing to take on the case of a small-time criminal jailed for a murder he...

Pros: Story, characters, and dialog.
Cons: Some of the characters more or less seem wasted at points.

Robert B. Parker continues to write the Spenser novels at a break away pace. This is perhaps one of his better novels as of late. In this Spenser faces death at the hands of a deadly and intelligent hit man. Pushing himself into a case Spenser delves ...

Pros: Spenser book. Some nice dialog.
Cons: Plot rings false.

Okay, perhaps I'm ragging on Parker's Spenser too much, but many people point to Small Vices as a brief return to form for Parker. I beg to differ. Small Vices represents everything that has become wrong with the Spenser series. Unlike one of my other...