Angel Eyes

June 1, 2019

Nobody knows what happened to Ellie Sharp, who scampered from Boston to Los Angeles with glittery Hollywood dreams, then disappeared two years later. Spenser is hired by her family to find her, and soon thereafter he's also confronting the disappearance of protégé Zebulon Sixkill, now an L.A. investigator.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 23, 2019
Bestseller Atkins’s routine eighth Spenser novel (after 2018’s Old Black Magic) takes Robert B. Parker’s PI from his native Boston to Hollywood, in search of 23-year-old Gabby Leggett, an aspiring actress whose mother grew concerned after not hearing from her for over a week. Spenser is aided by old friend and colleague Zebulon “Z” Sixkill, who’s filling in for Hawk as Spenser’s partner and muscle. The pair pursue obvious leads from Gabby’s personal life, including questioning her former boyfriend and current agent, Eric Collinson, who’s less than cooperative and denies having any knowledge of her whereabouts. Her latest lover, Jimmy Yamashiro, the president and CEO of a major movie studio, won’t disclose Gabby’s current location, but reveals that she’s been trying to blackmail him. Before long, Spenser and Z are menaced by the requisite gun-toting thugs, and Spenser must call in another old ally for help. It takes a while for Gabby’s fate to be disclosed, a reveal that’s neither original nor surprising. This by-the-numbers effort will appeal most to Parker devotees. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

October 1, 2019
Spenser goes to Hollywood. In the two years since she's moved from Cambridge to Los Angeles in pursuit of stardom, Gabrielle Leggett has been a dog walker, a personal assistant, a model, an actress, a media influencer, and now, for the past two weeks, a missing person. The LAPD knows about Gabby's disappearance, but her mother, dissatisfied with their efforts, sends Spenser (Robert B. Parker's Old Black Magic, 2018, etc.) out to the Left Coast to do the job right. Predictably, Gabby's agent and former romantic partner, Eric Collinson, doesn't want to talk to him. Neither does Jeffrey Bloom, the acting coach who thought Gabby had just dropped out of his class, or Jimmy Yamashiro, the married studio CEO who took Collinson's place. And the only thing publicist Nancy Sharp, Gabby's ex-boss, wants to talk about is how much fun she and Spenser could have if he'd only lighten up. Eventually Spenser works his contacts to get an audience with Yamashiro, but the results are less than impressive. He must be making an impression, though, because five Armenian thugs ambush him and shoot his West Coast associate, Zebulun Sixkill, in the arm, disabling him and requiring Spenser to look for another sidekick. Eventually he gets a lead that connects Gabby to Joseph Haldorn, aka Phaethon, the founder of HELIOS, a hush-hush organization that promises self-actualization and conducts itself suspiciously like a cult. But instead of thickening, the mystery surrounding Gabby just gets more violent and diffuse. Surprisingly, Atkins gets the hardest parts right--his hero/narrator now sounds indistinguishable from Robert B. Parker's--but bogs down in the plotting, the area in which he presumably had the freest hand. As for the cod-out-of-water milieu, it evokes not so much particular SoCal locations as dozens of earlier SoCal whodunits. Readers who've always wanted to see Spenser in Tinseltown can cross that off their bucket lists.

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November 15, 2019
Gabby Leggett moved to Boston to L.A. to become an actress, but, after a couple of commercial spots, she dropped out of sight. Gabby's mother hires Spenser to find her daughter. Once on the West Coast, Spenser connects with his prot�g�, Zebulon "Z" Sixkill, a Cree Indian and successful PI. Their first contact is Gabby's former boyfriend, who has a key to Gabby's apartment, which Spenser discovers has been tossed. As Spenser and Z continue to retrace Gabby's life, the trail points to a self-help group that promises enlightenment. Sounds great, but there are also indications that the leader of the group has a proclivity for young women like Gabby. Spenser and Z become hypersuspicious when a couple of thugs attempt to stop their investigation. Gunfire ensues. Atkins continues to do a fine job of extending the life of Robert B. Parker's characters and capturing the tone of the Spenser series. Parker would be proud of Atkins' wise-guy patter; the violence is exciting and nicely choreographed; and Atkins' plots are complex enough to hold readers' interest yet do not get in the way of the suspense.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2019

Nobody knows what happened to Ellie Sharp, who scampered from Boston to Los Angeles with glittery Hollywood dreams, then disappeared two years later. Spenser is hired by her family to find her, and soon thereafter he's also confronting the disappearance of prot�g� Zebulon Sixkill, now an L.A. investigator.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.