** spoiler alert ** This romance is satisfying in the way Parker's Spencer novels are satisfying: The good guy is going to pick a path, stick to it, and everything's going to come out for the right and the good in the end. At least that's what you think until your brain kicks in.

And then you realize this is a novel not about love, but obsession. Boone's disregard for everything and everyone but Jennifer is taken to crazy levels - the utter disregard for the husband, the child and so on.

This is only okay in a Parkerian world - where "to thine own self be true" really does trump other commandments and stubbornness is the highest calling. It works, on a while-I-was-reading-it-was-fine level only because anyone that would stand in Boone and Jennifer's way (i.e. her husband, and even the demanding child) is a total ass, or (in the case of the one other woman Boone sees) equally set on some course in alignment with Boone's goals. But when you come up for air, the whole thing starts to feel creepy.

I miss Robert B. Parker mostly because I do, despite the narcissistic angle on Spencer's world, miss Spencer and Susan. But now I miss him because I really, really want to take him out and find out if he really thinks this kind of narrowing of the world down to one person is actually love.