If you're a fan of Boston private eye Spenser, Little White Lies will keep you eagerly turning the pages to follow his latest adventures in the mean streets ...the 45th book in the series about Spenser created by Robert B. Parker, and the sixth one written by Ace Atkins, who was selected to continue the series after Parker's death in 2010 ...opens with a referral from Spenser's longtime love, Susan Silverman, who sends a patient from her therapy practice to him for a different kind of help ... Spenser's closest comrade, the enigmatic and invincible Hawk, plays a major role in Little White Lies ... In lighter moments, Atkins continues Parker's tradition of detailing Spenser's love for good food and drink... Before you crack open Little White Lies, lay in some doughnuts and pour some Blanton's neat, water back, just like Spenser likes it.
Robert B. Parker's Little White Lies by Ace Atkins is another winner. Having taken over writing the Spenser novels nothing has been lost with this smart aleck character ... One of Parker’s best characters is Dr. Susan. In this novel she is front and center, which makes the story even more enjoyable. It is fun to have her work with Spenser, where her toughness and intelligence are highlighted. But a newer character that is also getting more airtime is Boston PD Captain Glass ... The relevance of the plot should not be lost on the readers. Within an entertaining story this book has fake news, spinning lies, and how facts can be spun.
When Connie Kelly finds herself in trouble after an awful online dating scheme cost her several hundred thousand dollars, her therapist sends her to Spenser, a Boston-based private investigator ... The first half (or act I) of the book is solid. However, things take an eye-rolling turn when Connie flip-flops on her feelings towards Welles, kicking off a head-scratching second act that strays so far from the original plot that it feels like a completely different book ... If you’re a fan of Spenser and are invested in this series, then by all means, there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy Atkins’ latest offering. But if you’re not already in love with the character or familiar with the series, you might struggle to get into this one.
Some things you can always count on — like the sun rising in the east, bears hibernating in winter and a new Robert B. Parker/Spenser novel in May ...Atkins stepped in. The Mississippi-based novelist was hand-picked by Parker’s estate to continue the series ... He writes with the same spare style as Parker and peppers the narrative with the same wry wit ... In Little White Lies, Spenser’s embarrassed client lost $300,000 in a romance and real-estate con. The scam artist is a talking head on cable news programs. Spenser finds that everything about the guy, including his CIA credentials, is complete fiction. He vows to make the villain’s next con his last.
Little White Lies takes place in the immediate aftermath of Slow Burn, with Spenser in living quarters that may or may not be temporary following the arson that destroyed his familiar lodging ...Atkins gives the series one of its more complex plots, although it starts off simply enough ...has everything one might want or wish for in a Spenser novel: an interesting mystery, explosions, fisticuffs, that wonderful dialogue, Hawk, Spenser and Silverman ...there is a small, uncharacteristic glitch that keeps it from being one of my favorites ...ultimately –– no one really reads Spenser for the villains –– and it certainly won’t deter me from reading Atkins’ next book in the series or recommending it to you, whether you are a new reader to the series or a stalwart from the 1970s.
M. Brooks Welles, if that's his real name, seemed so wonderful. He was a good bit older than Jumpstart administrator Connie Kelly, but that was no problem: Dr. Susan Silverman tells Spenser that Connie’s always been attracted to older men... Now that Welles has stolen her heart and $300,000, though, she wants him to pay ... Act 2 will send Spenser and Hawk to Welles’ old stamping ground, the Greater Faith Ministries of Georgia, for a tussle with gun-running pastors that floats so wildly free of Spenser’s initial investigation that it might have been written by yet another Robert B. Parker wannabe ... Readers taken in by Atkins’ sureness of touch in the first half of this schizoid yarn richly deserve to get flimflammed by the bait-and-switch that follows.
A taut, suspenseful story line drives Edgar-finalist Atkins’s sixth Spenser novel (after 2016’s Slow Burn), which deepens the relationship between the Boston PI and his significant other, therapist Susan Silverman ... Some interesting tension arises because Susan feels responsible for Spenser’s involvement in the increasingly perilous case, while her professional ethics constrain her from giving him important information.
