Book ~ "Looking for Rachel Wallace" (1980) Robert B. Parker

From Goodreads ~ Rachel Wallace is a woman who writes and speaks her mind. She has made a lot of enemies - enemies who threaten her life. 

Spenser is the tough guy with a macho code of honor, hired to protect a woman who thinks that code is obsolete. 

Privately, they will never see eye to eye. That's why she fires him. But when Rachel vanishes, Spenser rattles skeletons in blue-blooded family closets, tangles with the Klan and fights for her right to be exactly what she is. He is ready to lay his life on the line to find Rachel Wallace. 

Rachel Wallace is a writer, lesbian and feminist activist.  When she receives threats, she hires Spenser to be her bodyguard.  Their personalities and ideologies clash and Rachel fires Spenser.  When she is kidnapped, Spenser feels duty-bound to try to find her because had he behaved as she wanted, he never would have been fired and she wouldn't have been kidnapped.  Spenser's investigation leads him to an organization that is anti-communist, anti-gay and affiliated with the local Ku Klux Klan.

This is the sixth in the Spenser series (there are currently 46, with the last six written by Ace Atkins after Parker's death in 2010).  I've read many in the series over the years (and have enjoyed the series) but I can't remember where I'd jumped in.  I know I hadn't started at the beginning so have started reading them from the beginning of the series.  Though it is part of a series, it works as a stand alone.

I liked the writing style ... I find it humorous at times.  Spenser is a tough guy with a wisecracking sense of humour.  This book was written and is set in the early 1980s so is dated with some of its references and lingo.  Rachel was too angry and unbelievable to me with her hatred of all men.  It's written in first person perspective in Spenser's voice.  As a head's up, there is swearing.