Widow's Walk
Parker's Spenser mysteries have settled down into a comfortable pattern. The intensity and seriousness of Parker's early work are now a distant memory, but he's overcome the indulgence of the middle-era, in which each Spenser novel was little more than a TV episode. Parker's strength has always been dialog, and he's honed his style until his books now read like plays. Reading this witty, pleasant confection, it's hard to remember now how exciting a mystery like Early Autumn seemed in the 80's,