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Alas, A Lackluster Effort Despite a strong review in the Sunday N.Y. Times Book Review, and despite a nice-if-predictable premise (i.e., Spenser's sidekick, Hawk, gets mortally wounded but summons his strength to eventually do payback), this entry in an overall great series is unfortunately a lackluster effort. Just feels tired and played out. A lot of the action happens offstage, which I suppose is supposed to be refreshing, but only feels unsatisfying. Parker's recent baseball novel about Jackie Robinson was excellent, one of his signature books, so it's not like he doesn't have the chops anymore. Maybe Mr. Parker needs to take a little time off from his annual "Spenser" output & build up a creative head of steam for a bigger, better Spenser magnum opus a few years down the road.