The main challenge of relocating all of my Parker books to the new guest house in Vermont is that I am constantly tempted to pick one up and start reading whenever I’m up there.  That was how I got into the paperback volume of Valediction, written by Parker in 1984, the 13th Spenser novel.

Sadly, this one was a stinker.  Way too much reliance on having read the previous book which is constantly referred to and was totally lost on me and way too much soap opera action and dialogue with Susan Silverman. The book opens at a Harvard commencement where Susan receives her PhD in psychology and has some very snappy dialogue, but quickly descends into psycho-babble between a love sick Spenser and a ‘trying to find myself’ Susan.  There is the usual brisk and violent action as Spenser kills multiple bad guys and some great repartee between Spenser, Hawk, and the Boston cops, but the story bogs down way too often with Spenser and Susan on the phone trying to figure out love.  Ugh!

Skip this one and move either to the very early Spensers or the very late ones.