This is a remarkably faithful adaptation of Robert B. Parker's novel. Most of the changes -- Susan's personal involvement in the case -- simply help better convey Parker's writing on-screen.
Some changes are to be regretted: A nice sequence of the novel in which Spenser follows a lead and steals something of the Bad Guy's is given to Hawk, and happens off-screen. A character who's just plain dumb in the novel is retarded in the movie, necessitating a change in his fate that seriously damages the structure of the last act.
But nobody's ever done Parker's dialogue justice the way the late Robert Urich did, and, Mr. Parker's claims to the contrary, he was the perfect Spenser, and playing in a script adapted by Parker from his own novel, and filmed in locations that _looked_ like Massachusetts, this is as close as we've come yet to seeing a Robert B. Parker novel on-screen.
Some changes are to be regretted: A nice sequence of the novel in which Spenser follows a lead and steals something of the Bad Guy's is given to Hawk, and happens off-screen. A character who's just plain dumb in the novel is retarded in the movie, necessitating a change in his fate that seriously damages the structure of the last act.
But nobody's ever done Parker's dialogue justice the way the late Robert Urich did, and, Mr. Parker's claims to the contrary, he was the perfect Spenser, and playing in a script adapted by Parker from his own novel, and filmed in locations that _looked_ like Massachusetts, this is as close as we've come yet to seeing a Robert B. Parker novel on-screen.