The Widening Gyre by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"There was a little coffee left. I drank half of it. If I always drank just half of the remainder, it would never run out."

I like the "mathy" quote shown above and I like Robert B. Parker's The Widening Gyre (1983), the tenth novel in the Spenser series. I have been reading them in chronological order and, in my view, it is the only one, other that the first, The Godwulf Manuscript, that deserves a three-star rating, all the others being two-star, sort of "meh" reads.

Spenser is hired by a Christian Right politician to provide security in his Senate campaign against an opponent who is rumored to have mob connections. Our manly yet intellectual private eye is grumpy: his girlfriend, Susan Silverman, is away on a pre-doctoral internship in a hospital, "succoring the afflicted," and Spenser does not like being alone.

The portrayal of the Religious Right political candidate is quite believable, not just a roughly painted caricature like protagonists in several earlier novels in the series. The author sprinkles in some apt observations of a political campaign, for instance:

"As the candidate spoke with the people, there were no questions, only shared certainties."

The plot is interesting and generally plausible, except for Spenser's uncanny ability to find the right solution in every situation and to figure out the best ways to outwit all the bad guys.

A heavily intellectual conversation between Spenser and Susan sounds a little out of place in the fast-paced plot:

"'[...] I have vestiges of my upbringing, and religious training, and school inculcation that nag me under the heading of conscience. But consciously and rationally I try to do what serves me the most at least cost to others."

It is fun to read, though. I am wondering how much my positive opinion of the novel owes to the very strong first page, which reads like a throwback to the 1940s - 1960s noir or a homage to Chandler or Macdonald:

"When you thought about it, silence was rarely silent. Silence was the small noises you heard when the larger noises disappeared."

I am happy that the series of totally unremarkable novels ("Spenser #2" through "Spenser #9") has been interrupted by a substantially better work. I am also grateful to the author for using a fragment (the first stanza, that contains the widening gyre phrase) of William Butler Yeats' poem The Second Coming as an epigraph, which encouraged me to read the poem - a worthwhile experience.

Three-and-a-quarter stars.


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