Double Deuce

Double Deuce (1992) Robert B Parker

Since I disliked the narrator so much when he read the last book, I’m switching to reading the ebooks until … Well, it would be Chance, but the library doesn’t have it, so it looks like it’ll be Small Vices, the first Spenser book I came across, and one of my favorites. (I don’t believe I want to spend my audible credit on Chance.)

But we’re talking about Double Deuce here. Hawk is asked to stop gang murders in a housing project, so he asks Spenser for help.

“I might need some support,” Hawk said.

“You might?”

“Yeah. Pay’s lousy.”

“How much?” I said.

“I’m getting nothing.”

“I’ll take half,” I said.

“You ain’t worth half,” Hawk said. “Besides I got the job and already put in a lot of time on it. Give you a third.”

“Cheap bastard,” I said.

“Take it or leave it,” Hawk said.

“Okay,” I said, “you got me over a barrel. I’m in for a third.”

Be aware the story opens with the murder.

Her name was Devona Jefferson. She was going to be fifteen years old on April 23, and she had a daughter, three months and ten days old, whom she had named Crystal.

It seems to me like that bit there tells you so very much. It’s horrible.

The good part of this story, however, is the dialog between Spenser and Hawk, which I always love.

“How come in books and movies the ghetto is always teeming with life: dogs barking, children crying, women shouting, radios playing, that sort of thing? And I come to a real ghetto, with two actual black people, and I can hear my hair growing?”

“Things are not always what they seem,” Hawk said.

Oh, Susan also asks Spenser to move in with her. That works pretty much as expected.

She cut the tops off the broccoli and threw the stalks away. Then she separated the flowerets and piled them up on her cutting board. I sat on a stool opposite her and watched.

“You could peel those stalks and freeze them,” I said. “Be great for making a nice soup when you felt like it.”

Susan looked at me as if I had begun speaking in tongues. “In my entire life,” Susan said, “I have never, ever felt like making a nice soup.”

Weirdly, that’s one of the passages that has always stuck in my mind.

Despite the horror of a girl and her baby being murdered, and the romantic difficulties of our intrepid heroes, I do like this book.

I couldn’t think of an answer to that, so I kept quiet. I have rarely regretted keeping quiet. I promised myself to work on it.

Rating: 8.5/10

Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons

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