The Professor

An odd one, this. Other reviewers seemed to have lapped it up even while pointing out the fine ethical/deeply questionable line Spenser walks here. Spenser plays Pygmalion and personally the White Knight routine didn’t sit well with me at all but that may have been because I wouldn’t have swallowed Spenser’s Machismo 101 course (with a sprinkling of the liberal arts) anywhere near as passively as his monosyllabic ward, Paul.

“Early Autumn” is another well-written, lean, novel and the subtle use of the seasons as a metaphor for growing up and winter, quite rightly, implied as adulthood suggests Parker was aiming for something a bit more literary with this outing. It’s certainly not a thriller or a mystery, more a character piece allowing us to learn a little more about Spenser’s veneration of autonomy and self-reliance; a bit rich considering his constant mooning after Susan Silverman, but never mind. Spense gets wrapped up in a bitter divorce battle in which the father has absconded with the son and the wife naturally wants him back. Except actually the parents don’t give a toss about the boy, they’re just scoring points off each other and that hasn’t done much for the bairn’s self-esteem. In fact the fellow seems to be in a state of arrested development or withdrawal, like he’s had his mobile phone confiscated. The novel serves as a useful, if dispiriting, reminder that terrible parents have always been around even though in the 21st century there are some spectacular examples in public life to point to and observe in a sort of Daily Mirror way that someone needs to think of the children. Here Spenser acts out our fantasies of being just that person, right down to undertaking to teach the boy how to pump iron and bang a nail in and, um, blackmailing the conveniently dodgy parents to stay the hell out of the life of their son.

The parents don’t take this sitting down, eventually – get this – hiring hitmen to spray Spencer’s place with bullets and understandably seriously rocking his relationship with Susan Silverman. It’s fair to say I am Team Silverman in this novel, she is highly suspicious of Spencer taking the boy under his wing and not happy when trouble comes home to roost on her doorstep. Meanwhile, 20 years before Billy Elliot, the young man whose life they have taken over expresses (handily) an interest in dance and setting him up at a college for just such an education becomes the goal. He also, by the by, ends up entirely complicit in Spencer’s breaking and entering of the offices of his parents, discovering his parents hobbies include arson and monthly sex-fests but that’s suburbia for you.

That interest in dance is what elevates this novel from the mundane and it is perfectly in keeping with the liberal Spenser-verse as established in the previous novels. Despite my misgivings I must concede the version of this story where Spencer’s actions all go horribly wrong would be tediously predictable and off the top of my head I can think of several crime dramas in which a teacher shows too much of an interest in a pupil and becomes suspect number one in a murder investigation. Been there, done that and Parker avoids it all. He posits a version of the American hero who pumps iron, builds houses, visits art galleries and cooks for his girlfriend. Spenser was a New Man right from the “The Godwulf Manuscript” and seven or eight novels in it’s interesting to see how far he’s willing to go to live that life, how much he believes it’s a way of life that could benefit the young boy. In the end, though, it’s Hawk that proves especially useful as a solution-provider when Spenser hits the final brick wall. Spenser talks the talk, but Hawk walks the walk.

Having said all this, and I remain dubious, there is no way I could possibly dislike a novel that opens with a reprisal of the “thigh” joke from “The Judas Goat”. A very nice little reward for loyal readers, right into the 21st century. Bravo, Mr P.