I watched her accept the fact that she was alone with me, and watched as her persona adjusted to the fact. She smiled at me. There was a touch of conspiratorial intimacy in the smile. Rikki Wu was sex. I was pretty sure she was spoiled and self-centered and shallow. Maybe cruel. Certainly careless about other people. But she was sex. She would like sex, she would need it, she would want more of it than most people were prepared to give her, and she would be totally self-absorbed during it. I'd spent too many years looking for it, and occasionally at it, not to know it when I saw it. And I was seeing it. She would be a hell of a good time once a month. (p. 60)[boat kids in a gang]tI looked at the kids for a moment. They were not something new. They were something very old, without family, or culture; prehistoric, deracinated, vicious, with no more sense of another's pain than a snake would have when it swallowed a rat. I'd seen atavistic kids like this before: homegrown black kids so brutalized by life that they had no feelings except anger. It was what made them so hard. They weren't even bad. Good and bad were meaningless to them. Everything had been taken from them. They had only rage. And it was the rage that sustained them, that animated their black eyes, and energized the slender, empty place intended for their souls. The kids saw me looking at them and looked back at me without discomfort, without, in fact, anything at all. (p. 70)t[Herman Leong] was looking past me out at the street, looking at the people moving past us, and they seemed to me for a minute as they must have seemed to Herman Leong all the time: insubstantial, and temporary wisps of momentary history that flickered past, while behind him was the long, unchanging, overpowering weight of his race that bore upon the illusory moment and overpowered it. (p. 94)[Jocelyn Colby, the cipher that launched 3 murders & ruined several lives]"A woman like that reflects her own emotional life. She has no depth of commitment; she doesn't understand it in others. She has not trust; she assumes others don't either. If he doesn't want me, it's because there's someone else; if I can get rid of someone else, he'll want me. It's an adolescent vision of love, which is to say romanticized sexual desire." (p. 174)
I haven't read a Spenser/Hawk series in a few months since I was getting weary of him and Susan, but this fun merry-go-round story put a spark back for me. (Never would I get weary of Hawk for heaven's sake.) The story kind of went nowhere and Spenser and Hawk said so and that's what I liked about it. Spenser and Hawk both acknowledged that they were on a wild goose chase always coming up with zero answers in trying to find the shooter of an actor who was on stage performing when killed. There were no suspects and no one knows anything about anything. And we aren't in Boston, Dorothy, but on the Mass. coast in a smaller snobby town delineated by class geographically. The name of the town is Port City where illegal immigration of Chinese supplies the ranks of a Chinese mob who speak only Cantonese (or Mandarin.) And of course, they have their own closed society answerable only to their mob boss. But is there any connection to anything? The answer is no, nothing and it turns into a bit of a joke between them; there's nothing to go on through most of the book. Toward the last 1/5 of the book, clues begin to surface and good thing because the book was almost over. Hawk is black, shaved head, 18" neck, works out regularly and drives a new white Jaguar. He's the hippest and best dressed in the entire paperback world. If I turn up missing here on Goodreads.com it's because I'm in a white Jag with a white scarf in my hair blowing in the wind with a hot dude driving. And Tom Bodett, don't leave the light on. We'll be at a much classier joint than you can provide.
What do You think about Walking Shadow (1995)?
Susan is on the board of directors of the Port City Theater Company. When the Artistic Director complains about a stalker, Susan asks Spenser to accompany her to the theater to check out the situation.After talking to the Director, Spenser agrees to take on the case and he and Susan attend the play. In the middle of the production, an actor is shot and killed and so a homicide investigation begins.Spenser decides to interview each board member. This straight forward process turns complicated when the husband of a board member (a Boston tong) warns Spenser to drop the case.The threat prompts him to call in Hawk and Vinnie for backup. They soon discover large numbers of Chinese illegals are being brought into the area. The the Chief of Police has been bought off by the Tong and refuses to take action. Another murder and a possible kidnapping add to the confusion. Everything comes together, but not until some unexpected plot twists lead to a surprise ending.
—Genie
The first thing that I noticed about this book other than it was a detective novel was the mistake that kept rearing its ugly head throughout the entire novel. So often a question was worded as a statement. eg: "What's the name of the book," Vinnie said. Where is the question mark? Missing in action. And shouldn't it be "What's the name of the book?" Vinnie asked or Vinnie inquired. In this book it is always said even when it is a simple statement. The author should use more than the word "said." Now the story itself is fine, but not spectacular. The characters are good and I feel the author is capable of better tales.
—Jamie
I don't read a lot of detective fiction, but had been wanting to try Robert Parker for awhile now. I saw the old Robert Urich series "Spenser for Hire" years ago and thought it was okay but knew the books had to be better. As a Parker was a bit of a Raymond Chandler disciple, I knew that most of the magic must be in Parker's style and the way he tells a story.That's not quite right. Chandler's use of language is missing here. That's a good thing, because nobody wants to be a pale imitation. Robert B. Parker's prose is clean, straight forward and often quite funny. The dialog, especially between Spencer, Hawk the former Mafia trigger man they bring in for back up is hysterical - if politically incorrect to the extreme. It's okay. With Parker you know when he's joking, unlike so many of the raving lunatics we now here on talk radio.The mystery itself is no great shakes for complexity. The leading actor of an experimental theater company is shot, on stage, during the premiere of a new work. Also, someone has been stalking the leading actress, along with the artistic director of the company. As a favor to his girlfriend Susan, Spenser slowly descends into the world of Chinese Tongs, Vietnamese Street Gangs and community fund raising for the arts.What REALLY made this novel stand out for me was the revelation of the killer and what eventually happens the person who set the tragic events into motion. To tell more is to ruin the plot, but the impact on the reader is devastating. You know that people like this really exists.To tell more is to ruin the plot - but for me this was a real education. It's not the detective that's important in this kind of story, it is the revelations that happen along the way, the life experiences the detective - and we, the readers, share. In that respect, "Walking Shadow" echos back to the best of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe stories, which means that this one is near the top of a very, very large heap.
—Chuck Briggs
