Taming a Sea-Horse by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"[...] maybe I had seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker.
I called Susan at home.
'I'm sitting in my office with only one light on,' I said, 'and I'm quoting Prufrock to myself.'
'My God,' she said, 'tell me about it."

In Taming a Sea-Horse (1986), the 13th installment of the Spenser series, Robert B. Parker relies on character continuity to set up the plot. Patricia Utley, the owner of a call-girl business, whom we first met in Mortal Stakes, hires Spenser to find April Kyle (see Ceremony), who disappeared from her stable of "girls." When Spenser talks with April, she seems to be in love with a certain Robert Rambeaux, a Juilliard music student. Rambeaux stupidly tries to outmacho Spenser, and our hero needs to beat him up a little. I appreciate the author's pun of getting a Rambo beaten up. Yet the entire Rambeaux episode reads like a fragment of a 1940s noir.

The plot is typically implausible and quite silly, but at least Spenser does not have all those governmental agencies helping him this time around. There is a lot about the sex business and Spenser uses his muscles, stamina, and boxing training to do his trademark righteous things. The plot even takes him to the Caribbean island of St. Thomas.

With Susan Silverman permanently back with Spenser, the reader can enjoy their banter:

"'Dr. Silverman,' I said [...] 'You are a highly educated Jewish psychotherapist approaching middle years. And here, in this sophisticated island hideaway, I find you talking dirty and giggling like an oversexed teenage shiksa.'
'Talk to me, baby,' Susan murmured, 'whisper in my ear'"

For me, the best thing about the novel is not the silly plot or the series of beatings but the reference to T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I had not known that poem, and I am thankful to Mr. Parker for getting me to read it!

Two stars.

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