Someone to Watch Over Me, Ace Atkins

In the 48th Spenser book overall, Ace Atkins puts in a callback to his first outing with Robert B. Parker's main creation, Spenser. In 2012's Lullaby, he helped Mattie Sullivan find the actual men who killed her mother. In this year's Someone to Watch Over Me, a grown Maddie comes to Spenser for help with what seems like a small matter: A friend's young sister unwisely took $500 to be a "hostess" at a well-heeled private Boston club. The girl's encounter with a powerful man there unsettled her enough that she fled immediately, leaving behind a backpack and laptop. Although the girl asked Maddie to help, she only got herself thrown out of the club and she would like a little help from Spenser.

He freely gives it, but this small rock turns over to reveal corruption deep and wide as wealthy and powerful people indulge their appetite for young girls while being protected by public officials -- some of whom are just bought off but some of whom participate in the lead baddie's sordid entertainments. Now working with Maddie as well as his longtime friend Hawk, Spenser pursues women willing to tell the truth about the rot and the predators at its core. They won't go quietly, though, and to threaten Spenser or just plain stop him they hire the Gray Man, a professional assassin who once nearly killed him.

Up until last year's Angel Eyes, Atkins had a string of strong outings with Spenser. Its less-focused, less-disciplined narrative left it mostly unsatisfying and unfortunately Someone is a second miss in a row. Atkins ignored a rule that Parker -- intentionally or otherwise -- created in the last decade or so he wrote Spenser -- when your story features Rugar, the Gray Man, it's going to stink. The monochromatic assassin first appeared in Small Vices, where he nearly killed Spenser. Despite his importance as a lever for the narrative, he had a relatively small part. But he came back in on Spenser's side in Cold Service and then as an antagonist again in Rough Weather. Neither book was very good, and part of the reason was the way they traded in the global espionage sort of market in which you might find a super-assassin. They detracted from the realism that usually grounds a Spenser book (A Catskill Eagle, though lacking the Gray Man, has a similar problem of scale).

The banter between Mattie and Spenser is fun, but the obvious Jeffrey Epstein analogue storyline and the way connections to Hawk's supposed Foreign Legion and mercenary past are drawn into the story leave Someone very un-Spenser like and ultimately unsatisfying. It's Atkins' first real miss with the series, so we can hope he bounces back with his next outing.