Hush Money (Spenser Mystery)

"Parker says he'll keep writing Spenser novels as long as the public wants to read them, which probably means he'll need to keep writing them for the rest of his life. Spenser is 'the very model of a modern major shamus, '" proclaimed The Boston Globe of Robert B. Parker's most recent New York Times bestseller, Sudden Mischief. With Hush Money, Parker adds another classic to the legendary series, with a morally complex tale that pits the burly Boston P.I. and his redoubtable cohort, Hawk, against local intellectual heavyweights.

When Robinson Nevins, the son of Hawk's boyhood mentor, is denied tenure at the University, Hawk asks Spenser to investigate. It appears the denial is tied to the suicide of a young gay activist, Prentice Lamont. While intimations of an affair between Lamont and Nevins have long fed the campus rumor mill, no one's willing to talk, and as Spenser digs deeper he is nearly drowned in a multicultural swamp of politics: black, gay, academic, and feminist.

At the same time, Spenser's inamorata, Susan, asks him to come to the aid of an old college friend, K. C. Roth, the victim of a stalker. Spenser solves the problem a bit too effectively, and K.C., unwilling to settle for the normal parameters of the professional/client relationship, becomes smitten with him, going so far as to attempt to lure him from Susan. When Spenser, ever chivalrous, kindly rejects her advances, K.C. turns the tables and begins to stalk him.

Then the case of Robinson Nevins turns deadly. It is, Spenser discovers, only the tip of the iceberg in a great conspiracy to keep America white, male, and straight. Spenser must call upon his every resource, including friends on both sides of the law, to stay alive.