Books: ‘Broken Trust: A Spenser Novel’
I recently finished reading Broken Trust by Mike Lupica, the 50th title in the Spenser series. A little background…
Robert B. Parker created Boston private detective Spenser (“no first name”) in 1973 with The Godwulf Manuscript and continued through Sixkill, published posthumously in 2011. Sixkill was the 39th Spenser novel. Along the way (1985–1988), there was a Spenser: For Hire TV series starring Robert Urich.
The prolific Parker also wrote a book series featuring Boston P.I. Sunny Randall. Another series featuring small town police chief Jesse Stone resulted in a series of TV movies starring Tom Selleck. Parker also wrote 4 westerns featuring friends Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The first of these, Appaloosa, was made into a movie starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.
Getting back to Spenser… After Parker’s death in 2010, Ace Atkins continued the Spenser series with another 10 books. Which brings us to Mike Lupica, veteran sportswriter and novelist, who took over the series in 2023 with… wait for it… Broken Trust.
Are ya with me so far? ’Cause all this will be on the final exam.
The wife of a Boston-based tech billionaire and philanthropist asks Spenser to delve into her husband’s past. It seems hubby has been acting very strangely of late and she wants to see if there are any skeletons in his closet that might be worrying him. The wife is a friend of Spenser’s longtime girlfriend, Susan, so he says he’ll see what, if anything, he can discover. Spenser’s longtime friend and sometime associate Hawk is there to assist.
Lupica sets the story in our time, so the tech billionaire may have been inspired by Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and the like. There are references to the Red Sox trading Mookie Betts to the Dodgers and having some bad seasons thereafter, and other clues to the time period. In Broken Trust, Lupica avoids the growing trend of authors inserting their own thinly-veiled political commentary.
I enjoyed this story even though Lupica elevates literary product-placement to a level I have never seen in any novel before. It’s one thing to season a story with real-life places and products to give it local flavor. But you can almost hear the Cha-Ching! of the cash register drawer as Lupica spotlights the brand name of (seemingly) everything that Spenser sees, consumes, or thinks about. Maybe he tones it down in his next story.
Goodreads currently give Broken Trust a very solid 4.22 average rating. I might give it a little less, perhaps a round four point oh, but I enjoyed it enough to consider more of Lupica’s work. I have only read 2 or 3 of Parker’s own Spenser novels and will probably check out a few more of those before returning to Lupica’s installments in the series.
