Hugger Mugger: A Spenser Novel - Hardcover

B Parker, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719556694 ISBN 13: 9780719556692

Publisher: John Murray, 2000

Synopsis

A highly collectible first edition/printing, tight clean copy, protected in a new brodart wrapper, no inscriptions, unclipped dustjacket, this is not an Ex-Lib or a BCE/BOMC edition.\nWhen Spenser, private investigator, is approached by Walter Clive, president of Three Fillies Stables, to find out who is threatening is two-year-old horse Hugger Mugger, he cannot say no. Then the case takes a more deadly turn when the attacker claims a human victim.

About this title

Review:

Why is somebody shooting Walter Clive's horses at Three Fillies Stables in Lamarr, Georgia? That's what toothy, patrician Walter wants the droll, hulking Boston detective Spenser to find out. Walter worries that his racetrack phenomenon Hugger Mugger, worth millions, is next. So Spenser goes south to a place where "the heat felt like it could be cut into squares and used to build a wall," as he puts it in the crisp Chandleresque lingo that made him famous in dozens of novels.

The Clive clan is one weird bunch. Take Walter's daughters, his three "fillies." Penny is like her dad, all impeccable looks and icy efficiency. Stonie and SueSue take after their sinister mom, who left the family to live with a guitarist in San Francisco and changed her name to Sherry Lark. Penny helps Dad run the business, while her soused sisters cheat on their pathetic husbands, Cord and Pud. (Pud's short for Puddle; his dad was named Poole.) As unsightly family secrets spill, Spenser feels like he's in a Tennessee Williams play. Then someone on two legs takes a bullet, and the mystery gets tense. Spenser gets plenty of sarcastic mileage out of upper-class horse-country twits, crooked security guards, dumb jocks gone to seed, and wily Southern lawyers, and the story saunters well. What's best are the endless wisecracks, the unflattering thumbnail character sketches, and sharp sentences like this one: "Like all jockeys, he was about the size of a ham sandwich, except for his hands, which appeared to be those of a stonemason." --Tim Appelo

From the Inside Flap:

Cd's 6 1/2 hours
Read by Joe Mantegna

Spenser is back and embroiled in a deceptively dangerous and multi-layered case: someone has been killing racehorses at stables across the south, and the Boston P.I. travels to Georgia to protect the two-year old destined to become the next Secretariat.

When Spenser is approached by Walter Clive, president of the Three Fillies Stables, to find out who is threatening his horse Hugger Mugger, he can hardly say no: he's been doing pro bono work for so long his cupboards are just about bare. Disregarding the resentment of the local Georgia law enforcement, Spenser takes the case. Though Clive has hired a separate security firm, he wants someone with Spenser's experience to supervise the operation.

Despite the veneer of civility, Spenser encounters tensions beneath the surface southern gentility. The case takes an even more deadly turn when the attacker claims a human victim, and Spenser must revise his impressions of the Three Fillies organization- and watch his own back as well.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Murray
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0719556694
• ISBN 13: 9780719556692
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 307