Bob & Lisa's Spenser for Hire Pages

Stardust
Robert B. Parker
Published 1990

This one is set in Boston but has side-trips out to California. Susan's helping out a TV show, and it's star, Jill Joyce, needs protection. She refuses to help, though, and is a drunk, drug user, and nymphomaniac. Spenser digs in regardless, tracks down her family to various parts of California, and to the Berkshires and Dover. You get to meet Chollo, a good "hitter", out in California, who helps out near the end. And Jill is taken to Susan's cabin up in Maine that Spenser "built with a friend".

Lisa Says: Jill really annoyed me, as I suppose she was meant to! The book was intersting, but not perhaps as interesting as some of his other works. Maybe it was just the Jill Annoyance Factor .

The whole "she's bad but there's a reason why" is sort of interesting. Susan is quite the Jewish Princess in this one, now refusing to do menial tasks. She's good at the Jill problem, though. I just can't root for Jill.

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