12 September 2006

Book Banter -- Looking for Rachel Wallace

Title: Looking for Rachel Wallace
Author: Robert B. Parker
Length: 219 pages
Genre: mystery
Plot Basics: Spenser is hired by a publishing house to be a bodyguard for Rachel Wallace, a radical feminist author. Spenser's machismo doesn't sit well with Rachel and after just a few days on the job, she fires him. But when Rachel is kidnapped, Spenser takes it upon himself to find her.
Banter Points: This one was interesting -- the interplay between Spenser and Rachel was well-written at the beginning. Spenser has been described as the "thinking man's detective" and that fits well with what we saw of him in this book.
Bummer Points: Spenser again, solves the crime partly with violence. This is the key difference Word Nerd is seeing between mystery series with male detectives and female detectives -- the women throw fewer punches.

Word Nerd recommendation: Word Nerd enjoyed this one better than Judas Goat, the last Spenser novel she read. She's going to keep chipping away at the series in the future, but this 30-year backlist will take awhile to get through.

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