2 October, 2001: Valediction
Validiction may represent the absolute peak of the Spenser series. Susan Silverman gets her doctorate and departs for California and another man, leaving the painfully autonomous Spenser struggling with another's absence for the first time in his adult life. It becomes rapidly apparent that he's no longer cut off for the single's life; without the person who's become his anchor of sanity, he's miserable and angry, and it makes him oh so sloppy. (I have to wonder how many of the recurring characters in the Spenser series were originally planned as such. The cops Quirk and Belson, Hawk the leg-breaker, yes. But Susan? Henry Cimoli, who owns the gym where Spenser trains? And they're good characters, even if they've become as ritualized as ones in Noh drama.) One of the knocks on Parker's series is that Spenser gets smugger and smugger as the series goes on, but in Valediction, he's unfocused and hurt. People die because he's wrapped up in himself and not paying attention. For this one book, Spenser remains a wise-ass, but he's certainly not smug.