Boston PI Spenser and right hand Hawk follow a con man’s trail of smoke and mirrors in this thrilling entry in Robert B. Parker’s long-running series. Connie Kelly thought she’d found her perfect man on an online dating site. She fell so hard for handsome, mysterious M. Brooks Welles that she wrote him a check for almost three hundred thousand dollars, hoping for a big return on her investment. … her investment. But within weeks, both Welles and her money are gone. Her therapist, Dr. Susan Silverman, hands her Spenser’s card…
A self-proclaimed military hotshot, Welles had been a frequent guest on national news shows speaking with authority about politics and world events. When he disappears, he leaves not only a jilted lover but a growing list of angry investors, duped cops, and a team of paramilitary contractors looking for revenge.
Enter Spenser, who quickly discovers that Welles’ name, résumé, and client list are nothing but an elaborate fraud. As he follows the mystery man’s trail from Boston to backroads Georgia, Spenser will need help from trusted allies Hawk and Teddy Sapp to make sure Welles’s next con is his last.
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Little White Lies is a Spenser For Hire mystery, with the hero at his smart-mouthed, tough guy best. Hawk is along for the ride in this installment, where the two are out to solve a murder and stop a group of vicious gun-runners. There’s plenty of action — some of it in GA — with good triumphing over evil in the end, of course. 😉
Spenser, Robert B. Parker’s iconic Boston P.I., appears here for the forty-fifth time, now in the very capable hands of Ace Atkins who has revived the series and made it fresh again.
As the book opens, Spenser’s Significant Other, the therapist Susan Silverman, refers one of her clients, Connie Kelly, to Spenser. Kelly has fallen hard for a guy named M. Brooks Welles who claims to be a former high-ranking secret agent for the U. S. government. Welles has impressed not only Kelly, but a number of cable news networks who have regularly featured him as a noted authority on military matters and international developments.
Welles convinces Kelly to give him nearly $300,000, which he is going to invest in a sure-fire scheme that will make her a fortune. But then Welles disappears and Kelly realizes that she has been conned. Embarrassed, she wants Spenser to find Welles and recover her money.
That will turn out to be a complicated process. Welles is involved in a complex web of mischief with a bunch of gun runners and other bad actors, none of whom want Spenser messing around in their business. Federal agents are also involved in the hunt, and they don’t want Spenser messing around in their business, either.
Naturally, Spenser could not care less what either the Bad Guys or the Good Guys want. He’s on a mission, with the assistance of his best friend, Hawk, and he’s not about to be deterred. The result is a very entertaining novel that is sure to please any fan of the series and practically anyone else who enjoys crime fiction.
If I have one nit to pick with the book, it involves the fact that in his earlier Spenser novels, Atkins had seriously toned down the sappy, saccharine byplay between Spenser and Susan Silverman that so annoyed many readers, this one included. He seems to have stepped it back up a notch in this book, and thus left me cringing at several of their scenes together. Otherwise, I enjoyed the book enormously.
Ace Atkins channels Robert B Parker so well with Spense and Hawk’s conversations exactly as they should be. Their stake out conversations were excellent.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again… Ace Atkins is writing better Spenser novels now than the last few that Robert B. Parker wrote before his death. Not only does Atkins perfectly channel Robert B. Parker’s voice, without slipping into satire or pastiche, he also matches Parker at his best in terms of character and story. Longtime fans of the series will be glad to see the return of some familiar faces and references to past cases in this tale, which pits Spenser against a conman, a mega-church, and paramilitary bad guys. I doubt anybody but Parker himself could top Ace at writing Spenser. I can’t wait to see where Ace takes Spenser next.
You know the expression, “You get more flies with honey than vinegar”? A sarcastic a p-hole privte detectives may sound like good writing to this writer, but seriously, it’s been done to death, as it were.
Maybe that’s the idea. The author doesn’t want to write a plot unless ever bad guy in the story has a gun and a grudge against this PI. Yet, with one hundred to one odds, the PI comes out alive and the one hundred are killed or jailed.
Just once I’d like to read of a Private Eye who went about gathering information without being a jerk. He might actually get what he wants without actually having to dodge bullets. No matter, though, because this PI never gets shot. Even when six guys have guns aimed at him, he walks away. It’s so realistic. Where’s my sarcasm button when I need it?
If you like action packed, gun-shooting bad guys, you’ll enjoy this story. When Jack Reacher is up against six armed men and walks away victorious, its credible. Props to Lee Child. With this guy, it’s just gratuitous writing.