School Days

I just finished listening to School Days by Robert Parker. This is one of the books in his Spencer series. (Anyone remember Spencer For Hire???)

In this book, Spencer is hired by Lily Ellsworth to prove her grandson, Jared Clark, is innocent in the recent school shooting in Dowling, Mass. The police cornered the shooters in the school library and they talked one of them into surrendering. The one that came out was Wade. The other shooter disappeared. Wade told the cops that Jared was the other one.
On top of that Jared confessed, but his grandmother believes he's innocent.

Spencer talks to the parents and finds out that they don't want anyone looking into it and rehashing it. They just want it to all to go away. He talks to the principal of the school and the officer who was in charge when the shootings started. He is met with the same reaction. He soon finds out that he is the only one who wants to find what happened and why.

I have read some of Mr Parker's books before, although I'm not sure if they were from the Spencer series. I do know I've always enjoyed the sarcastic wit that his characters have, but this book just felt pretentious. Seriously, I felt that 3/4ths of the book was Spencer talking to people trying to find out what happened and no one really telling him anything. I think he could have cut the middle of the book out and nothing impertinent to the story would have been lost. If I had been reading this, I would have never made it through. I bore easily and if a book doesn't grab me by the first chapter, it's not gonna happen. As it was, I was listening to it while I ride my bike to work and the famous Joe Mantegna was reading it, so I stuck with it. He was the only saving grace to this book!

I give this book a 1 out of 5.