“As soon as he was gone they had cleaned out his room. It was as if they had emptied the room of him. Tried to render it pre-Jared, as if they could return life to the time when they had moved here and it was mostly possibility.” — Spenser, walking through Jared’s room


Sandwiched between a very good entry, Cold Service, and the last great Spenser novel, the poignant Hundred-Dollar Baby, Robert B. Parker took a shot at addressing the growing number of school shootings perpetrated by students. He did so with the same elegant and breezy narrative style he’d always used, yet underneath there are serious observations about cause and effect, and personal responsibility for actions despite them which make this one worthwhile.

Susan Silverman is in Durham, North Carolina for a shrink conference, and Hawk is not around. It gives this entry the feel of the early Spenser novels, before its aspirations were smothered by the shift in focus to Silverman and Spenser, and their cloying relationship. Although there’s a phone call with Susan, and Spenser pines for her return on occasion throughout the narrative, we also are reminded how pretentious and vain she can be. On one occasion, Spenser is almost thrilled to see the incredibly sexy guidance counselor/psychologist pumping her own gas, noting in offhand manner that Susan would abandon her vehicle and walk home before she would do so. And the reader can almost hear the regret in Spenser’s narrative voice when he laments that romantic walks in the rain he enjoys, are taboo because Susan is afraid she’ll mess up her hair.

The actual case this time is very unusual, because Spenser decides early on that Jared was indeed one of the two students who walked into the private school and killed so many. The mystery surrounding this one is why, and Spenser isn’t letting go until he discovers the answer — if indeed there is one to be found. Hired by the wealthy and formidable grandmother of Jared, Lily Ellsworth, to prove the seventeen-year-old boy’s innocence, Spenser heads to Bethel County, Massachusetts and discovers no one wants him there. The psychology of a town trying to put something as unfathomable as a school shooting behind it is explored by Spenser’s interactions and conversations with people, which makes a refreshing change from Susan and Spenser bouncing it around ad nauseam.

Chief Cromwell is full of bluster, and he doesn’t want Spenser asking questions because of his own guilt — he got the initial call and wasn’t experienced enough to know how to react. His actions, or rather inactions, might have got more children killed. But that hardly makes it his fault. Garner, the school president, would also like to put the tragedy behind the school. With one boy, Wendell, fingering the other, Jared, and then Jared confessing that he’s guilty, it seems cut and dry. But Spenser is Spenser, and there’s something here he can’t quite put his finger on. Wendell’s mother is described by family in this way:

“Miss Crunchy Granola. She was born in 1963 and grew up to be a hippie.”

Spenser paints a dismissive picture of the aging liberal hippies like Dell’s mother. He has one conversation with her and pretty much writes her off as any help to her son, or his investigation. Jared’s parents are another matter. They moved to the area with a rosy picture of how things were going to be, and now appear to be more concerned about their place in the community post-shooting. Spenser doesn’t have any more luck with Jared, who seems just another jerky young kid. Trying to track down how the two boys acquired the guns puts Spenser in the middle of a world he had long left behind, but remembers well:

“I could taste the stiflement, the limitation, the deadly boredom, the elephantine plod of the clock as it ground through the day. I could remember looking through windows like these at the world of the living outside the school. People actually going about freely.”

His poking around eventually leads him to the brother of a gang-banger named Yang, and we see the misguided scrubs of school, looking for acceptance in any quarter they can find it. It gives Spenser fans a chance to recall another book in the series, when we meet Major again, years down the road. He’s still tough, and still looking for acceptance himself, from a different element of society. He sets up a meet between Spenser and Yang’s brother, and Spenser learns how the boys got the guns. Finally a tip from a kid tells him how they learned to use the weapons. But why did they do it? The answer seems very elusive, and in a conversation with the overtly sexy and flirtatious Rita Fiore, who plays a big role in this one, he asks Rita that very question:

“I’ve been in the criminal law business a long time for someone as young and seductive as I am, and there’s got to be a reason. Doesn’t have to be a good reason. But there’s got to be something.”

When Spenser realizes the story he’s getting in regard to Jared’s school life — from other kids — is in stark contrast to what the wildy sexy guidance counsellor is telling him that Jared told her, he takes off the gloves and does some more serious poking around. It leads to discovering academic betrayals of trust, blackmail, and unplanned murders. Spenser himself makes a bad call by misjudging a kid named Animal, and his error gets a young girl killed. Parker gives the reader just enough to feel Spenser’s regret without going on about it for pages. It is one of the striking differences between the pre-Susan-is-everything entries and the post-Catskill Eagle books. It’s quite telling, because if Susan were a more prominent part of the book, we’d get a lengthy and perhaps tedious discussion of the event, but because she isn’t, we’re left with the moment of deeply felt regret, before Spenser moves on, which is more Hawk-like in nature.

Much of the discussion and discourse here between Spenser and Rita, and others, is about personal responsibility, because no matter how much society wishes to understand causation, and blame someone other than the perpetrator, in the end it is an abstract, because someone must be held accountable or society crumbles. Parker, very knowledgeable about academia and never fond of it, again shows readers, even at a younger level, the tawdriness beneath. Toward that end, he recalls — perhaps not perfectly, a Henry James quote:

“A teacher is a man employed to tell lies to little boys.”

There is a lot going on here, from failure to flourish to sexual blackmail. When Spenser finally gets to the bottom of the why regarding the shooting, he’s in for another revelation. It prompts him to call in Rita Fiore to help him. Her presence in this one is like a breath of fresh air to the reader. She has an impact on the outcome for one of the boys in this really fine entry in the series. In addition to a really good story, some nice exchanges — especially between Spenser and Rita — and some sad and insightful rumination on youth and school, we get a dash of dangerous confrontation, and finally some real violence. We also get some terrific writing:

“The wind shifted outside, and the rain began to rattle against the big picture window next to us. It collected and ran down, distorting reality and blurring the headlights and taillights and traffic lights and colorful umbrellas and bright raincoats into a kind of Parisian shimmer.”

There weren’t many good entries left after School Days. Just the fabulous Hundred-Dollar Baby and the very good, The Professional. Parker’s voice has been completely and utterly lost now that others have taken over writing this series. Like that rain on the window, what this series was is now distorted, until it’s an unrecognizable shimmer. The elegant writing, the artfully but never graphically described violence, the snappy and enjoyable dialog, the politically incorrect humor, and an uncanny sense of where to draw the line at all of the above, were lost once Parker died. If you’ve missed this one, or ignored it because it was one of the later entries, do yourself a favor and read it. Very good stuff. ( )

First edition as new

Good case taken on by Spenser involving a teenage school shooter. Did the boy shoot up the school with his friend or not? Spenser uncovers the reason, finally!, but can't absolve the boy like his grandmother hired him to do. I really disliked the adults that had done wrong to this boy. Horrible adults! ( )

For my review please visit my blog: Martin's View: School Days ( )

This was my first Robert Parker book and I was surprised that I enjoyed it. ( )