When we completed the guest house on the hill across the dirt road from our 1830 farmhouse in Vermont, I moved my collection of Robert B. Parker Spenser novels to the bookcase there.  Now, when I’m enjoying some quiet time in the new house, gazing out on the immensity of Mt. Ascutney in its four season glory, I’ll pick up an old Parker and within a page or two, I’m back in his world of Boston criminal intrigue.

This book, the fifth in the series of 40 Spenser novels, is unusual in that it takes place in Europe and Canada but is typical of the series in the growing pile of dead bad guys as the pages move from the right hand to the left.  It’s a quick read and not one of his best, though the classic repartee between Spenser and Hawk and the loving exchanges with the then Harvard PhD student, Susan Silverman are pure Parker and great fun.

The plot is a bit thin.  A very wealthy man who is restricted to a wheelchair after surviving a terrorist bombing in London that resulted in the deaths of his wife and two daughters hires Spenser to find and take care of (dead or alive) the nine terrorists responsible for the murders.  In what could only happen in pre-9/11 days, Spenser flies off to London and then Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Montreal killing most of the bad guys before he completes his task with the help of Hawk.  Page turning, silly stuff, but fun.