Buddy Gott's Reviews > Robert B. Parker's Broken Trust

I'm a little torn as to how I feel about this book. On one hand, I think that the story was pretty good. It took a little longer to grab ahold of me, though, than I would have liked. To me, the plot wasn't especially compelling until just over the 20% mark of it. From there on, things started to get better.

What frustrated me most in 'Broken Trust' were the depictions of Spenser and Hawk. They seemed a little bit 'off' to me. I give writer Mike Lupica a lot of credit for taking over the Spenser series and I think that he did a very good job on this book. However, his Spenser and Hawk didn't feel exactly like the Spenser and Hawk I loved from the original Spenser stories written by Robert B. Parker. At times here, Spenser was a little too silly with the jokes he made to others and he came off, at least to me, as being more arrogant than he had been in Parker's books. Not to say that Spenser didn't have a healthy ego back then, but it was different here.

As for Hawk in this new book, I thought he was a little too crude-sounding at times. Maybe I'm remembering the original books incorrectly, but I don't recall Hawk cursing as much in them as he does in this one. Also, I think sometimes Hawk sounded a little too 'street.' I know he often sounded that way in Parker's books, and it was frequently just an act the character put on for others around him, but there were times here I thought it was amped up a little bit too much.

I'm not saying that Mike Lupica didn't do a good job on the characters. He mostly captured them very well. I just think there were several times in the book when they didn't seem like 'my' Spenser and Hawk, if that makes sense. I really can't fault the author too much for that, though. After all, he's a completely different writer than the one who wrote the dozens of earlier books I read and loved that featured these characters.

As for the story in 'Broken Trust,' after its slow start, it was compelling enough for me to keep turning the pages and I was mostly satisfied with how it ended. I think that Mike Lupica, overall, did a very good job on the book. There were multiple scenes in it that I thought were exceptionally written.

While I didn't love the book as much as I wanted to, I'm still glad I read it. If Mike Lupica writes another Spenser book, I'd definitely give it a chance.

NOTE: I received an advanced reading copy of this novel from the publisher.