THE PROFESSIONAL

Actor Joe Mantegna delivers a one-man performance. Parker's hard-boiled Boston detective, Spenser, does his usual thing in solving a few murders while philosophizing, clobbering bad guys, and cavorting with his psychoanalyst squeeze, Susan, and scary (but here mostly absent) friend, Hawk. Opening and closing musical snippets comprise the audio enhancements; mostly Mantegna is on his own. He’s a strong narrator; the text flows smoothly, and the characters are precisely distinguished. The only distraction is Parker’s overuse of dialogue tags (more noticeable on audio than in print). The Boston milieu does not demand Brahmin accents but plain middle America. That's a plus. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2010]