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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 4 |
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SCHOOL DAYS THE NEW SPENSER MYSTERY |
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Spenser looks into school
massacre in suburbs
of TheColumnists.com
If you're a private eye, this figures to be a "lose, lose" sort of case:
Two 17-year-old boys shoot up their private high school, killing five students, an assistant dean and a Spanish teacher. Six more students and two more teachers were wounded in the rampage before police stopped the slaughter. Your client is one of the two teenagers. He already has confessed and his partner also has identified him as the other shooter.
But the boy's wealthy grandmother thinks he's incapable of such a crime and wants Spenser to prove him innocent. Meanwhile, nobody wants to talk to Spenser because the whole town wants to put this nasty episode behind it.
But Spenser takes the case for a whole lot of reasons that make sense to me. First, the grandmother pays very well. Second, Spenser's main squeeze, psychiatrist Susan Silverman, is away on a prolonged trip and he doesn't have anything better to do. And then there's this: Spenser is dying to know why kids do such things and he relishes the chance to find out, up close and personal.
This is Robert B. Parker's 33rd Spenser novel: "School Days" (Putnam, $24.95). Parker has honed it down to essential all-Spenser material. Susan Silverman doesn't put in an appearance until the very last chapter. What's more, Spenser's pal "Hawk" never shows up at all. He's just a name that's bandied about a little along the way. Almost all the other Spenser people are absent, except Rita Fiore, the hot-pants defense lawyer, the proverbial "girl who can't say no," who's even been showing up in Parker's other series of novels about police chief Jesse Stone.
That's fine with me. Spenser by himself is lots of fun. His wisecrack ratio seems to go up whenever he has nobody like Susan around to monitor him. This time he's a wisecracking fool with nobody but Pearl, his unambitious female dog, to occasionally growl at him if he gets too silly.
Which he does from time to time, like in the first chapter, when the grandmother who hires him tells him he seems a bit "sporty" for a detective.
"Sporty?" he asks her
"A wisenheimer," she explains.
"Wow!" says Spenser. "It's been years since someone called me a wisenheimer."
"I may not be current in my slang," she replies. "But I know people. You are a wisenheimer."
"Yes," says Spenser. "I am."
Well, if the truth be told, Spenser may be the all-time great wisenheimer, at least in the world of detective stories. I live for his wisenheimer moments, especially when he's facing thugs and street toughs who expect him to be quavering with fear. Spenser never quavers. Instead, he wises off, right in their faces.
Anyway, Spenser has a few hints that something might not be quite kosher about the pat case local law enforcement has made against the two teen shooters. For one thing, the boy Spenser's investigating wasn't there when police finally stormed the school library, where they were holding hostages. The second shooter somehow escaped and turned himself in later. What's more, the boys both wore masks, so nobody actually saw Spenser's client at the scene.
For another, nobody has ever figured out where the boys acquired their guns.
There also is something the psychiatrists seemed to have missed when examining Spenser's client. And there's something even more intriguing about one of the psychiatrists.
Before Spenser reaches the end of the line in this case, though, he has to deal with a hulking, heavily-tattooed local gang boy named Animal, who seems intent upon blowing Spenser's head apart like so much milkweed; a local police chief who treats Spenser like something picked up on his shoe in a horse arena; his client's parents, who would just as soon see their kid put away ASAP, and the boy himself, a smirking little rodent you want to personally put in the electric chair , then pull the switch.
There is a nice little surprise tucked away in the last few chapters, but you don't need that to enjoy this fast-paced mystery yarn. My only complaint: I wish Spenser would stop eating doughnuts. He must be about 75 by now, though he'd never admit it, and that's just not good nutrition for a guy that old.
©2006 by Ron Miller. The book cover illustration is courtesy of Putnam. This column first posted Jan. 9, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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