TO BE FAIR, EVERY RECURRING CHARACTER WEAKENED THE SERIES:

Robert Parker introduced Susan Silverman in the second Spenser novel, and a lot of her conversations with Spenser focused on each person's need for freedom and desire for a reliable companion. Because Parker wrote dozens of Spenser novels, there were a lot of these conversations, and because Susan was a psychologist, these conversations tended to sound like those from 1970s encounter groups. Each person listened to the other, and each person's emotions were validated in warm and witty repartee. Readers, though, as evidenced in letters to the author and in blog posts that continued long after Parker's death, did not necessarily want to see these conversations. They flat out didn't want to see Susan. Spenser could coexist with Hawk, a laconic soldier of fortune, but many Parker fans called Susan "insufferable" and "unbearable" and wished she would vanish so that Spenser could take care of business, get the upper hand, thwart conspiracies, and bust heads.

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