As soon as I read the stanza from John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" telling us how "lover's love cannot admit absence, beaus it doth remove those things which elemented it," I knew our hero was in trouble. "Valediction," the eleventh of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, begins with a primal shocker as Susan Silverman receives her doctorate from Harvard and then announces she has taken a job in California, she will call but not give him her address, and walks out of our hero's life. As you can imagine, the impact on Spenser is profound, and while Paul Giacomin and Hawk are there for support, there is apparently little they can do. How profound an impact? Well, throughout the book Spenser drinks Irish whiskey instead of beer and the only thing I remember him making in the kitchen is a salad. Paul is there for dialectical engagements, but Spenser just sinks deeper into the abyss. But you know that a case is going to present itself which will seek to snap him out of it and that this case will provide a not too subtle counterpoint to Susan's abandonment.
Not surprisingly the case comes from Paul. His dance instructor claims that his girlfriend was kidnapped by the "Bullies," a fanatic religious sect. Spenser does not care about Tommy Banks or Sherry Spellman (that will come later), but he takes the case for Paul's sake. Even though he is barely going through the motions he will find out where Sherry is staying and will take more than a passing interest in the rather odd practices of the Reorganized Church of the Redemption. The problem is that our hero is nowhere near being at the top of his game and for once he is more than a step behind for most of the game with very costly results. Meanwhile things continue to go from bad to worse with Susan, and when Spenser connects with Linda, the woman he has been waving at across the street from his office window for several months, he is pretty much going through the motions there as well. Still, Spenser going through the motions is still above average, whether we are talking detective skills or affairs of the heart.
In retrospect we can see the groundwork laid for this cataclysmic split in the previous novels, but the foreshadowing was subtle enough that Susan's sudden actions sure come as a shock. But the hallmarks of this series, in addition to Spenser's caustic wit and pugilistic skills, have always been our hero's introspective and progressive character set against plots that over something different each time around, which does necessitate to my mind reading the books in order. "Valediction" is far and away the most painful Spenser novel and it certainly speaks to the very real possibility that worst things can happen down the road if that was not already clear to us. What this really underscores is that Parker is successfully fighting against the forces that compel many writers to repeat their best work, mainly because there is a history to this character and his relationships with the people in his life without slipping into the demeaning level of being a soap opera. That does not mean that Spenser is played on the operatic level, but it is certainly pointed in the right direction
