Thin Air

by Robert B Parker and Robert B. Parker

Book Overview

Her name is Lisa St. Claire. Her husband's a cop. Her whereabouts are unknown. Spenser thought he could help a friend find his missing wife. Until he learned the nasty truth about Lisa St. Claire. For... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399140204
• ISBN13: 9780399140204
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Spenser proves that he is a man of many loyalties

Spenser is a man of deep loyalties and principles and in this case he extends that to his sometimes adversary, police detective Frank Belson. When Belson's young bride Lisa disappears, he talks with Spenser with nothing resolved. The stakes are dramatically increased when Belson is shot three times in the back and is in critical condition in the hospital. When he regains consciousness, Belson asks for Spenser and requests that he find her. Spenser's search takes him to California where he reconnects with Chollo, a Spanish- speaking gunner that he needs as backup as Hawk is in Burma. Wisecracking as always with references to literature and aspects of pop culture, Spenser follows the trail as it leads him through Lisa's sordid past of drug use, prostitution and destructive love affairs. My favorite reference is on page 72 where Spenser asks a female professor what she is doing in her position. Her response is "I came for the waters" and Spenser replies with "There are no waters here" and her final reply is "I was misinformed." Right out of the great movie "Casablanca" starring Humphrey Bogart. Although the climactic rescue is very tense and gripping, the lack of fundamental honor among criminals leaves a bad taste in Spenser's mouth as the kidnapper turns out to be nothing more than a man with too much lonely little boy in him.

Robert B. Parker knows how to write books!

I believe I've read all of his books and I've been obsessed with the Spenser series. They started a year before I was born and he's still writing!! A lot of the books follow the same outline, but considering it's the character I guess I can't expect his M.O. to change. But it can become a little tiresome. I guess I blame myself for reading his books back to back to back.

Catharsis, Cathexis, What's Next-us? Purgative Pushes to Personality Paradise

When a great writer dramatizes trapped helplessness, I'm ready to eject. I almost squirmed out of reading # 22 in the Spenser series. But, this being the 27th novel I would have read in this 34 book series, I pushed like a Navy Seal through the first couple italicized segments of the kidnaping and ensuing situation, using the "hang in there" ropes provided by the characters' depth of commitment in returning Lisa St. Claire to the safety she had earned hard, by Frank Belson's side as his wife. I began clutching to hope for Frank to keep faith that Lisa wouldn't have left him willingly. I'm glad Parker didn't push the potential of dark tragedy of a soul drop like that. He worked the question just enough to rush the realism, then allow it to simmer under the diligence of "Keep the faith, baby." I won't go into detail about why Frank turned over the search to Spenser, and why Spenser went to Chollo instead of Hawk, for the first time in a rescue partnership. And, yeah, I'm asking, "What was Hawk doing in Burma?" In THIN AIR Pearl had progressed to standing on the dining table during meals, and Susan gave a humanity renewing surprise over a Mexican dinner more suitable in volume to Spenser. Dialogue scenes were evenly effervescent, with just the right amount of fizz to counter the interjections of ongoing Italicized segments. I was intrigued with the subtle shifts in patterns-of-psychosis of Lisa and her captor, as each seemed to be enduring an individual "cathexis" ... New word, probably brought into psychological jargon through the same sewer-line-purge-tank as "catharsis" ... Look up the original meaning of that one! "Cathexis" was brought into the plot by Madeline St. Claire, the current plot's previous psychiatrist for Lisa, as a sample of Lisa's uneven vocabulary expansion through reading a plethora of self-help books (too many, too indiscriminately, according to Madeline). Lisa's attempts to retain a recently seated kernel of healthy self served as an effective drama for exposing the visceral levels of retention-and-resurgence of psychological growth. Dictionary entry for Nexus: 1 - a connection. 2 - a connected group or series. 3 - the central and most important point. -ORIGIN Latin, from nectere 'bind'. A bad nexus would ultimately require a cathexis. Get yours here! Throughout the plot, I was led by the nose with curiosity about how and if Frank and Lisa would be reunited, hopefully at that central and most important point, which I was guessing would be a clean type of Love (considering Spenser's Romantic soul). Also found another key passage in THIN AIR, which exposed another appeal of this series: >> "You big with the bad guys, Spenser. You got Santiago helping you, Mr. Del Rio helping you, now this guy Broz, that I don't know, he's helping you. You sure you are a good guy?" "No," I said. I'm not sure." << <br /> <br />A nice collection of profound quotes could be lifted out of THIN AIR, from Spenser's ruminations di

Spenser (or Parker) Rules, OK.

More plot to this novel ~ more detecting too ~ than some other Spenser stories. Still, plot is not everything, and still not the real reason one reads Parker. The interplay between Spenser and Susan is as strong as ever; Hawk is in Burma ~ don't ask ~ so we miss seeing him and Spenser. There is a Hawk replacement in the person of Chollo, a Latino hit-man from one of Spenser's West Coast connexions and, while not as detailed or intricate as the Hawk conversations, his with Spenser are still pleasurable. The pretext for the action this time is the disappearance of Lisa St. Claire, wife of Spenser's Boston PD friend Frank Belson. When Belson is hit with three shots from behind Spenser activates himself and goes hunting. The trail leads to a Hispanic community in northern Massachusetts ~ hence the introduction of the Latino side-kick. A welcome innovation (from Parker, not for fiction as a whole) is the use of third person sections interspersed, in a different type-face, telling of Lisa's experience. We thus are given both the hunter and hunted points of view.

a touching and compelling work

In Thin Air, Robert B Parker deviates from his normal mystery format and produces more of a thriller. What happened and who did it is never in question -- the issue is what will happen. While this is being resolved, Parker reveals rich details about the principal characters, keeping the reader engaged throughout the entire book.Viewpoint varies with the primary chapters, as usual in the Spenser series, from the detectives perspective. Between these, the victim Lisa's view is represented. This is quite nicely pulled off. The welcomed trend in the series of deemphasizing the tiresome participation of Susan in the primary plot continues with Thin Air. Additionally, giving a rest to the use of Hawk as a superhero to completely suppress any opposition is also welcomed. While Hawk is a very enjoyable character, he's overused in the books preceding this.So Thin Air is highly recommended. If there is one criticism, some of the action at the end strains credibility to the point of collapse. But the reader is still touched by the result, something which can't often be said for genre work. This book only reinforces my assessment that Parker is an excellent writer.Dan