As an avid audiobook fan, I was turned off by this selection within the first 10 minutes by the author's overuse of "he said," "she said." It was so distracting that I started and stopped the story several times within a week, then gave up altogether after struggling through 2 hours. Also, I love a mystery, but this story lacks substance.

This is as an entertaining listen as the Parker/Mantegna pairings usually are and has quite a bit of the witty repartee that is Parker's style. I enjoyed the story, the reading of the story, and Parker's writing.

Small "however", however...Parker has put in a little bit of proselytizing regarding the 'victimless' crime of prostitution (I think there would be a few wives who'd disagree). And there a few other slyly inserted bits of political opinion here and there. I've quit reading Stephen King and Le Carre because they seem to be more interested in presenting their political opinions rather than writing a good story. Drug companies/big government/abortion rants aren't fun to read when one is in the middle of a decent story. Parker is tip-toeing into that area in this book and I hope he realizes we read his books for a good time rather than indoctrination.

But except for that little failing, it's a good read for riding back and forth to work. I chuckled out loud more than a few times. I still see the fellow who played Spenser on TV as my version when I read the books...makes for a VERY pleasant few hours of listening.

If only these books were longer and there were more of them.

If you love Spender, you won't be dissapointed.

As with all of his books, this one is also exceptionally entertaining, but too short.

Spenser and Hawk are two of my favorite fictional literature characters, and were played accurately on TV and in movies by Robert Urich and Avery Brooks. Mr. Mantegna was never convincing in film as Spenser but he does a fine job as a reader, I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately it still doesn't work. Mr. Parker's beautiful style is very sparse, using conversation as the mechanism to tell the story (no 400 pages of Steven Erikson to open a single door here). Unfortunately the reading script needs screen play or stage play editing to remove the near endless, "I said, she said, he said" remarks. They are migraine inducing and disrupt the pace and flow of the story, rendering even some of Parker's best works poor as audio books.

This story, the third appearance of April Kyle, is tired out of the gate, although the dialog between Hawk and Spenser sparkles as it should. It's too bad, because this story drops the majority of the pendantic psycho analysis babble that afflicts some of the other Parker books. Parker may be one of those authors best read from paper.

Story line is weak amd there are two too many I saie she said he said