The Professional (Spenser) (U)

The wives of Boston's wealthiest men have a mutual secret they all had an affair with the same cad who's blackmailing them, and Spenser's been hired to stop him. But when the wives start dying one by one, Spenser's new case becomes murder.Publishers WeeklyBestseller Parker makes producing snappy banter look easy in his 37th Spenser novel (after Rough Weather). He also manages to draw new readers into the Boston PI's major personal relationships with love interest Susan Silverman and friend/ally/bodyguard Hawk without shoveling on the backstory. Spenser agrees to help a quartet of married women fend off extortion demands from stud Gary Eisenhower, with whom each has had an affair. Meanwhile, the husband of one of the women under blackmail threat hires some thugs to deal with the matter. The action takes its time getting to a dead body, but, as usual, the smooth, entertaining prose more than compensates for any deficiencies of plot. The absence of major personal developments for Spenser or his associates marks this as a less memorable entry than others in this iconic series, but it remains a solid, enjoyable contemporary detective novel. (Oct.)