The Professional: A Spenser Novel
Written by Robert B. Parker
Narrated by Joe Mantegna
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
As matters become more complicated, Spenser's longtime love, Susan, begins offering some input by analyzing Eisenhower's behavior patterns in hopes of opening up a new avenue of investigation. It seems that not all of Gary's women are rich. So if he's not using them for blackmail, then what is his purpose? Spenser switches tactics to focus on the husbands, only to find that innocence and guilt may be two sides of the same coin.
Robert B. Parker
Robert B Parker was the best-selling author of over 60 books, including Small Vices, Sudden Mischief, Hush Money, Hugger Mugger, Potshot, Widows Walk, Night Passage, Trouble in Paradise, Death in Paradise, Family Honor, Perish Twice, Shrink Rap, Stone Cold, Melancholy Baby, Back Story, Double Play, Bad Business, Cold Service, Sea Change, School Days and Blue Screen. He died in 2010 at the age of 77.
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Reviews for The Professional
206 ratings18 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is one of Parker's last Spenser novels, and has the same wit and impetus as all of them, albeit a little less originality. Boo and Zel owe an unacknowledged debt to Steinbeck - it's rare for Parker not to signal that the tribute is intentional, but there's no hint that "Of Mice and Men" was deliberately being referenced here. The story of the four women being blackmailed is the usual glorious series of crushing human observations and action sequences. Always a pleasure...
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spenser is hired by a lawyer representing four women being blackmailed by the same genial boy toy. True to form, they're all slightly nuts, the boy toy is slightly nuts, and several ancillary characters are slightly nuts. Violence scales up until the book reveals a murderer and the (mastermind?) behind the murders, both of whom are more than slightly nuts. Hawk appears here and there for a few pithy lines, and Vinnie tails a party of interest at the end.There's no better way to spend 2 hours than with a big chunky Spenser novel (I challenge you to find larger line leading).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hired to help a group of wealthy women get rid of a blackmailing gigolo, Spenser finds himself more fond of the blackmailer than his victims. Not much of a mystery here, but it's an enjoyable trip anyway.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sweet as I think it is that a tough detective cooks and loves his lady friend, I wish the book would talk about something else once in a while. Oh, okay, he beat up a thug at one point, but pretty much the mystery was about a series of people determined to screw up their lives. Spenser didn't save anybody, and he didn't even get paid.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The post-Poodle Springs work of Robert B. Parker have come to be known by two unifying traits. The first is unsatisfying endings. Cases solve themselves and bad guys often walk away unscathed, both because the author couldn’t find an appropriate way to bring things to a close. The second byproduct of Parker’s abandonment of plotting is filler. Is there another answer when the work has to get done but you are unsure of what should happen next? The increasing fluff and padding turned me from a loyal reader into someone who would pick up his stuff on the cheap whenever I got around to it. Apparently Parker started to address these issues near the end of his life. Spare Change was the only Sunny Randall novel I completely liked and the previous Spenser effort had a serviceable conclusion.I am very much glad for this because Parker’s strengths are considerable. His reoccurring characters are like old friends. And he can find and dissect the underlining psychological reasons for some fairly complicated actions and reactions. And of course humor has always been a part of his repertoire.The Professional involves a seducer of women who has taken his abilities to newer levels, first by living off his victim’s generosity, then by selecting wives of rich, older men, and resorting to blackmail. Thing get more complicated, as they have to, and if the ending isn’t great at least it works in terms of the characters we’ve met. Not the glory days by any means but when the positives overwhelm the faults, my time was well spent.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is Robert B. Parker’s 37th novel featuring the witty, literate, astute, and very tough ex-boxer, ex-cop, Boston private eye known by only one name: Spenser. I have read at least 15 of these, and The Professional is my favorite thus far. This one, like all the others, features more clever repartee among recurring characters than action per se. It also has Spenser letting his vulnerability and uncertainty show for a change.The plot is rather Byzantine involving the blackmailing of several young wives of rich older men by a man with whom all of the women had been having an affair. Lawyer Elizabeth Shaw hires Spenser to make this man cease his activities, but this becomes an inadequate solution when the women start turning up dead. Evaluation: This is definitely “light” crime - the emphasis is on the banter rather than the bad guys. But that’s what makes his books so entertaining.(JAB)
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good story, a different kind of case. Enjoyed the book from start to finish. As a plus, only a couple of mentions that Susan was a Harvard PHD...LOL
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Cadillac of a book from Mr. Parker, which made a cruise more enjoyable. The gigolo really "liked the women", but he could have used his (other) head a bit more for his own good. None of the ladies besides Susan came off very well. Spenser is his usual wise guy self.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rather typical Spenser, which means it was a fun, easy read with some interesting things to think about when it's all over. I continue to be amazed by the amount of white space in his books. Anyway, the usual sidekicks are in it, making the usual clever comments while eating and drinking lovingly described food and alcoholic beverages. There are two characters in the book who are strongly reminiscent of the two guys in Of Mice and Men and some discussion of the value of being honest with yourself and others.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of the Spenser books I've enjoyed the most, and I've read almost all of them. His spare style grew on me after a while; his humor and characters, in particular, were always appealing. His stories weren't always fabulous, but I always enjoyed them anyway, and he was a master at conveying a wealth of thoughts and emotions in very few words. I especially enjoyed his exploration of moral and equal ambiguities in this book. Parker's recent death is a loss, and I'll miss Spenser and his crew. He was an icon of the genre.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Spencer is hired to find the man who is blackmailing a group of women. Each of these women are married to rich men and don't want their husbands to know that they have been sleeping with this man. Spencer is supposed to just stop him, and not kill him. Several murders later the book ends. This was not my favorite Spencer novel. This story needs more of Hawk.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Robert Parker has managed selling the same characters and dialog dozens of times, but somehow I always enjoy it. This is a reasonably nice Spenser novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another instant classic by the imortal Robert Parker. It was with hardedned hearts that Spenser fans across the globe learned of Parker's death in early January. Parker has brought a lot of joy to this reader over the years. I actually owe my life-long love of reading to him. When in high school I picked up one of his books from my brothers bookshelf, and I haven't looked back since.This is another fun Spenser novel, Spense doesn't get into too much trouble in this volume, but his wit and commentary on the world are as sharp as ever.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5the mystery part was well done, maybe a little too long, maybe a little anti-woman. i am not interested in his cute relationship with his sweetie. the reader was good
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One of my favorite literary daydreams has for years been that my husband and I shared a lovely dinner with Robert B. Parker and his wife, Joan. I imagined us talking about literature while Joan took tiny sips of a martini and Bob – we’d be on first name terms, of course – took gulps of Scotch, or listening to Bob wax rhapsodic about the Boston Red Sox, or dissecting the character of Spenser, Bob’s series detective. Alas, it will never be: Parker died this past January of a sudden heart attack while sitting at his desk writing. An enviable death, I think, but one that came much too soon. Parker was only my father’s age, a young 77.The Professional is not the last Spenser novel; Painted Ladies is due out this coming October. And it is impossible to read The Professional as any sort of elegy for Parker; it is, as are all the Spenser novels, “merely” a tale full of moral ambiguities, starring a bad guy who doesn’t really seem all that bad if taken on his own terms and some normal people who can’t really face up to what they’ve done and who they are. Parker seems to have been fascinated by the lies we tell ourselves, even the best of us. The only one who seemed to have a policy of strict refusal to ever fool himself about anything was Spenser – and even he occasionally fell victim to his own demons.On its face, The Professional is about a gigolo who turns to blackmail and the women who refuse to flout him by confessing their unfaithfulness to their spouses. A closer reading, though, suggests that Parker is talking about the nature of marriage – or, more specifically, monogamy (as Spenser and his long-time lover, Susan Silverman, have never married or even lived together (aside from one disastrous experiment in cohabitation)). Throughout the book, Spenser and Susan question each other as to whether they’d prefer to open up their relationship, but the questions seem to be more or less the equivalent of me asking my husband if he still loves me: they know the answer, but they just want to hear it. It’s a sort of flirtation, a verbal hug. In the hands of a lesser author, it would be mighty annoying, but for the long-time reader of Parker’s novels, it is a comfortable reassurance that all is right with the world.Parker’s style has long been to tell his stories mostly through dialogue. It reads very smoothly and swiftly, making it very natural to read this book in one sitting. It might fool a reader into thinking that this type of writing is easy. But advancing the action mostly through dialogue is a lot harder than it looks. It’s even harder to carry it off when your protagonist is a smart aleck who is constantly tossing out jokes and bon mots. Any aspiring writer would do well to study one of Parker’s novels for his technique.I’ll say no more about the plot. No one who knows Parker’s work ever reads his books because they expect a lot of the plot, anyway (though Parker manages, as always, to give readers a few surprises in this one); they read him to revisit Spenser, Susan, Hawk and Parker’s other characters, who have become old friends over the years. Were I to talk about the plot, I’d give away too much and still say too little, because that’s not the real point of the book. Spenser is ultimately a philosopher, and that’s his real charm.I wish I didn’t know there was only one more Spenser novel coming my way. I wish Parker were still at his computer, putting together the 2011 entry in the series right now. If there’s a heaven, though, and I get there someday, I expect there will be an entire shelf of new novels by Robert B. Parker for me to read. He’s probably tapping away at a celestial keyboard even now.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spenser is hired by a lawyer representing four women being blackmailed by the same genial boy toy. True to form, they're all slightly nuts, the boy toy is slightly nuts, and several ancillary characters are slightly nuts. Violence scales up until the book reveals a murderer and the (mastermind?) behind the murders, both of whom are more than slightly nuts. Hawk appears here and there for a few pithy lines, and Vinnie tails a party of interest at the end.There's no better way to spend 2 hours than with a big chunky Spenser novel (I challenge you to find larger line leading).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There is no such thing as a bad Spenser novel. It was fun visiting with Spenser, Susan, and the city of Boston again.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Decent Spenser novel, not enough Hawk. A group of 4 women band together and hire Spenser to get lothario, Gary Eisenhower, to stop black mailing them. But he is 'the professional' with women and is not interested in changing who or what he is. Of course, all is not as it seems and Spenser has to unravel what is happening. Parker pays homage to John Steinbeck with a 'Of Mice and Men' subplot.