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A knock on SpenserA's office door can only mean one thing: a new case. This time the visitor is a local lawyer with an interesting story. Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years sheA's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: theyA've all had an affair with a man named Gary EisenhowerA- and now heA's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower A"cease and desist,A" so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, SpenserA's assignment goes from blackmail to murder.

As matters become more complicated, SpenserA's longtime love, Susan, begins offering some input by analyzing EisenhowerA's behavior patterns in hopes of opening up a new avenue of investigation. It seems that not all of GaryA's women are rich. So if heA'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.

With its eloquently spare prose and some of the best supporting characters to grace the printed page, The Professional is further proof that A"[t]hereA's hardly an author in the crime novel business like ParkerA" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Lawyer Elizabeth Shaw turns to Spenser upon discovering that some wealthy friends have had affairs-with the same man. Now he's blackmailing them, and they're starting to die. Don't worry, there's a twist. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

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Bestseller Parker makes producing snappy banter look easy in his 37th Spenser novel (after Rough Weather). He also manages to draw new readers into the Boston PI's major personal relationships—with love interest Susan Silverman and friend/ally/bodyguard Hawk—without shoveling on the backstory. Spenser agrees to help a quartet of married women fend off extortion demands from stud Gary Eisenhower, with whom each has had an affair. Meanwhile, the husband of one of the women under blackmail threat hires some thugs to deal with the matter. The action takes its time getting to a dead body, but, as usual, the smooth, entertaining prose more than compensates for any deficiencies of plot. The absence of major personal developments for Spenser or his associates marks this as a less memorable entry than others in this iconic series, but it remains a solid, enjoyable contemporary detective novel. (Oct.)

[Page 39]. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.