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Sixkill

A Spenser Novel
by Robert B. Parker
Sixkill: A Spenser Novel. Putnam. May 2011. c.304p. ISBN 9780399157264. $26.95. F
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Parker's final Spenser book is a reminder of just how much we'll miss the beloved crime writer, who died in January 2010. Zebulon Sixkill, a Cree Indian whose college football career was sidetracked by the love of a bad woman, is the bodyguard for Jumbo Nelson, a (physically) huge movie star working in Boston. Jumbo's outsized appetites leave a young woman dead, and with Z the only potential witness, Jumbo's guilt or innocence becomes an open question. When Jumbo fires Z, Spenser takes him in and refines Z from an intimidating presence to a genuinely dangerous man. When Spenser tells Susan Silverman, "I know what I like and what I don't like, and what I'm willing to do and what I'm not, and I try to be guided by that," readers couldn't ask for a better epitaph for Spenser and Parker. [See Prepub Alert, 11/1/10.]
Alas for fans, this is Spenser's final outing, as Parker died last January. Spenser is up against a wall when he's asked to investigate accusations that movie star Jumbo Nelson raped and murdered a young woman; Nelson has a well-deserved bad-boy reputation. But things get clearer—and nastier—after Spenser hooks up with Nelson's bodyguard, a former football player and Native American named Zebulon Sixkill. Readers will be lining up to say good-bye.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , May 01, 2011
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