A Catskill Eagle by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"'This is the first time my ass may depend on whether Freud was right.'
'And Sophocles,' Susan said.
'Him too.'"

Continuing a mad rush to complete my 2021 challenge of 60 books - now five left for 19 days - I read only "easy" books, ones that do not require much thinking, such as Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels. A Catskill Eagle, the 12th installment in the series, begins very strongly, promising a thrilling, madcap story.

Susan had left Spenser for a job and probably for another man in California (see Valediction ). Yet now Spenser receives a dramatic letter from her: Hawk (now a regular character in the series, an all-powerful and uber-cool Spenser's helper) is in jail in a small California town, accused of killing a security consultant, and both he and Susan need help quick. The passage on page 3 sets the tone of the novel:

"I [...] looked at my apartment.
Bookcases on either side of the front window. A working fireplace. Living room, bedroom, kitchen and bath. A shotgun, a rifle, and three handguns."

No need to say that guns do play a role in the story. So does poetry, and even Freud and Sophocles. The essence of Spenser's style: pummeling and shooting baddies while quoting Robert Frost. Still, the setup of the plot is clever and there is a humorous passage that describes how Spenser gets arrested. The zaniness continues for almost the entire first hundred pages. Well, the bad guys are killed left and right, but that's on course for a Spenser story, only here it comes earlier than usual.

The story takes Spenser from Boston to California, then Connecticut and Boise, Idaho. Alas, about one-third into the novel, the humor begins getting a bit tenuous, and the plot implausibility index rises to extreme heights. Police and even FBI and CIA are all helping Spenser. Lieutenant Quirk's outburst:

"'The entire City of Boston Police Department is at your disposal. We've decided to give up crime-stopping altogether.'"

sounds like sarcasm, but, in fact, it accurately reflects the events in the plot.

To sum up: a great beginning followed by silly, deeply improbable plot. Not one of the better installments in the series. As a bonus, the reader will learn some details of Spenser's birth.

Two stars.



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