Police chief to Spenser: "We played it by the book. Straight down the line. By the book. And, by God, we kept a tragedy from turning into a holocaust.

Robert Parker's novels featuring a Boston private detective named Spenser got off to a slam-bang start in the 1970s. But since then, the series has grown in popularity but deteriorated in quality, the plots becoming as thin as negligees and the wisecracking detective turning into a parody of himself. It's not that Parker forgot how to write. Double Play, his fine 2004 novel about baseball, race relations and redemption, proved that he still can. But the Spenser series appeared long past saving. Occasionally, Parker would perk up enough to write a few chapters reminding us of why we liked Spenser so much in the first place, but he never got around to writing another good book. So School Days, the best Spenser novel since Early Autumn (1981) comes as a welcome surprise. This time, Parker has given his hero a case that is worthy of him: Two boys armed with four semiautomatic handguns gun down seven teachers and students in a suburban high school. The cops catch one of the boys in the act, and he rats out another, Jared Clark, who promptly confesses. Jared's grandmother hires Spenser to prove his innocence. It doesn't take long for our hero to realize Jared is guilty as charged. The best Spenser can do is dig up extenuating circumstances that could get Jared into a less unpleasant prison _ or, as Spenser puts it, "the easiest room in hell." So Spenser seeks to answer two questions: How did two suburban kids get their hands on semiautomatics? And why did they go on a killing rampage? Aside from the prosecutor, a good guy who cares as much about justice as his conviction record, no one is much interested in helping Spenser find the answers _ not the school officials, or the local police, or Jared's lawyer or even his parents. They all just want to forget and move on. Or are they hiding something?

The more they stonewall, the harder Spenser digs.

Before long, the digging gets a couple of kids killed, one by Spenser's hand, prompting a bit of characteristic Spenser soul-searching: "When I eventually figured out why Jared shot up his school, what would I have? The truth? Was that worth two bodies? The world had probably lost more for less. But they were alive, and now they weren't. Maybe the truth wasn't worth dying for. Or killing for. Maybe it never had been." There is a bit of bad news. Spenser's menacing friend, Hawk, one of the more appealing characters in modern crime fiction, fails to make an appearance, even though there were several moments when Spenser could have used his help. But Parker more than makes up for this by sending Spenser's insufferably precious girlfriend, psychologist Susan Silverman, on an out-of-town trip. Big strong Spenser whimpers his love to her over the telephone and she returns to leap into his arms in a superfluous final chapter, but we are thankfully spared the streams of Silverman psychobabble that have marred so many other Spenser novels. Throughout, Spenser is, as always, a smart mouth, or, as his elderly client puts it, "a wisenheimer." Police chief to Spenser: "We played it by the book. Straight down the line. By the book. And, by God, we kept a tragedy from turning into a holocaust." Reviewer: B. Silva