Rent: Crimson Joy

Spenser is called in by the police on a murder investigation in this, the 15th book in the series. There is a serial killer on the loose - the killer is targeting black women in their 40s, binding and gagging them and killing them in a most gruesome manner. His signature? A single red rose. As race and class tensions rise in Boston, the police put pressure on the team investigating the murders - and Spenser - to close the book on this as quickly as possible.

As Spenser edges closer to the truth, the killer targets Susan. With the police off the case (due to the confession of another man), Spenser calls in Hawk to help him. The two primaries on the murder investigation - Quirk and Belson - are asked to take vacation, because they believe that the wrong man is in jail. They join Spenser in protecting Susan and trying to find the killer.

The action in this book comes and goes - but when it is there, it is high intensity! This book is a thriller and a rather gruesome serial killer murder mystery. As such, it is atypical of Spenser - not to say that murders do not occur, just that usually murder is not the crime Spenser is investigating. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book a great deal - a recommend from me!

How dumb and coincidental is this - the bad guy is a patient of Spenser's girlfriend. This is good for readers who can't keep 4 characters in a book straight. He's done much better. Must of had a big boat payment due.

I love Robert Parker, and enjoy many of his novels. I've always found his Spenser series to be uneven -- some of the books are spectacular, but many of them are just passable.

I would put CRIMSON JOY in the "passable" category. A serial killer is on the loose, and Spenser is tapped by the Boston police to help find him. Apparently, Spenser is better trusted than their entire detective force. Spenser later learns that the killer many be one of the patients of his long-time psychologist girlfriend, Susan Silverman, and that her life may be in danger.

CRIMSON JOY is readable, and most of the dialogue is fun. But there is very little story in this novel. The serial killer plot is pretty simplistic. Parker focuses more attention on Spenser's relationship with Silverman, and the constant love talk between them. If you've read the more recent Spenser books, you know what I mean by this. There's also a lot of padding in this book, with numerous scenes that have little relevance to the serial killer plot. So we see Spenser at the gym, Spenser cooking, Spenser on a radio show, and so on.

If you like Parker's writing, as I do, then reading CRIMSON JOY is a decent way to spend a few hours. But if you're looking for an exciting, multilayered story to sink your teeth into, my advice is to try something else.

This time the reader was grabbed by the neck and held for a while as CRIMSON JOY opened onto an in progress investigation of a fresh murder scene of the Red Rose killer's "signature." From there the plot ran relentlessly into the seamless consequences and serious carnivals of media, political, and social "consciousness" pushes polluting professional pursuits of a serial killer. Parker had precisely pegged the gestalt of this "scene" and its take-off sidelines, with this # 15 in the Spenser series featuring the king pin of Boston homicide detectives, Lieutenant Quirk. Serving as his posse were Sergeant Belson, Spenser, Susan, and Hawk.

Presented on page 67 of the current mass market paperback, was one of the most cleanly accurate dialogues I've read of the position and essential attitude of a professional police person in charge of such a situation. Quirk, the good-guy cop (those types do exist), was confronted by representatives of the worst examples of human self-enhancement posed as social consciousness, from a shark-frenzied media, higher-echelon police presence, racial political-punk, religious frock, and feminist frizz ("The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly," exist in each of those Rings).

And the mad-cap chase was on.

Realistically, though, with Parker unable to present it any other way, this type of investigation gets nowhere fast, through grueling, non-stop, prime effort of dedicated noses sniffing dirt, and grinding stones.

(I worked for a couple months in 1985 in Portland, Oregon and Tacoma, Washington, with a couple private detectives trying to pick up the Green River Killer's trail. I'm still not sure what trail we were following, but it didn't give a successful conclusion at that time, fast, slow, or otherwise. Ann Rule recently published a flawlessly professional book, GREEN RIVER, RUNNING RED, about that horrifying nightmare's various trails and conclusions.)

So, the chase was on, in CRIMSON JOY. The actual investigation (in this Spenser novel) had begun effectively and efficiently a day or two prior to the rush (even though getting nowhere fast is the result for a frustratingly long time for heroic pursuers in this reality "show") and would continue relentlessly, in spite of being watched by a carnival of the calculated concern of users of the situation. Observing through Spenser's eyes those humans who pose primely (and primly) in pseudo-self-righteousness while they're using a serial killing arena to further professional, social, or personal causes; I was wondering (as directed by Parker's crisply chosen words) where the evil of rankest stench stewed. Was it in the killer, in his background, or in the foreground of the words: "We're watching you, Quirk, to be sure you do your job to the specifications of our suck-power interests."

As anyone who has read even a few pages of a Spenser novel would know, he has a nose to sniff the goods on anything, even in innocent seeding phases of personal rot. Hold your noses, folks, and dive in. Before taking the riveting descent, however, be aware of your time, place, and reading pose. You might not be leaving that setting before you crack the book's spine in the middle. Not to worry about time as much as muscle strain. The reading speed could be near double your norm for a Spenser novel, and the sinew tension should be set and held by the third line.

This plot is cold, as it should be. It's not over shocked; yet it's true to base reality, as it should be. Having read and reviewed the first 14 and a few of the later Spenser novels, I would expect no less from this author honoring through prime literature, sub-cultural significance in three pivotal decades of human evolution.

CRIMSON JOY is another insightful winner in the Spenser annals, not only flawlessly featuring all the above, but also allowing Spenser and Susan's relationship to culture-out cleanly in the heat of overlap of their personal and professional lives, as they slosh as a team in the middle of this carnival's sewers.

It's interesting to me, from our current temporal perspective, to note the original copyright date of each Spenser novel. I then note the fact that a book is usually conceived and written a year or two prior to the copyright date, around situations which had begun brewing a year or so prior to a novel's conception. Most often, in the case of an established, successful author, that manuscript would have been published around a year after the copyright date. Of course, in this Third Millennium these time frames are in flux, getting wherever faster.

Linda Shelnutt

A serial killer is on the loose; he binds his black female victims, strips them naked, sticks his gun in their vagina and pulls the trigger. Once he commits the act, he masturbates and leaves a long-stemmed red rose with the victim. After three murders, Belson and Quirk are getting nowhere and they have a strong suspicion that the killer is a cop. Therefore, they call in favors and recruit Spenser to aid them in the case. He complies and has the same suspicions. The killer taunts Quirk to try to catch him and the news media and local politicians all join in the clamor, raising the race issue.
They suffer a setback when a black man tries to get away with killing his wife by performing a copycat murder. He doesn't quite do it to perfection and Quirk and Belson easily recognize the situation. However, the people higher up are more than happy to believe that all cases are solved. Quirk and Belson then take a "vacation" to continue their search.
The situation takes an immediate turn to greater immediacy when a man tries to break into Susan Silverman's apartment. Spenser is there, fights him off, but his pride suffers a hit when the man is able to leap over a fence and get away while Spenser is unable to clear it. The assailant also leaves a rose behind and kills Susan's fish.
The man is a client of Susan's, and this fact is soon discovered by Susan, Spenser and Hawk. There is a climactic final scene when Susan and Spenser confront the killer in front of his clearly psychotic mother. Susan backs Spenser up with a gun, but the killer runs away. Spenser has no trouble chasing him down and the killer ends up sobbing in his arms.
While this story is good, it lacks the interesting dialog of other Spenser novels. Spenser, Quirk, Belson and Hawk are all very serious, rarely engaging in any of the wisecracking banter that is the signature of the best Spenser novels.