Book ~ "Taming a Sea-Horse" (1986) Robert B. Parker

From Goodreads ~ Nice girls don't. But blond, beautiful April Kyle does. She's a hooker hooked on the wrong guy - and she's on her way to trouble. So is Spenser. 

Looking out for April has landed him in the crud of Times Square. It's not a long way to big-business boardrooms where blood money get laundered into long green, sex is a commodity and young girls are the currency.

Spenser is a private detective in Boston.  Four years ago, he had placed a teenage hooker named April with Patricia Uttley, who ran a a high class escort service in New York.  Patricia advises Spenser that April has fallen in love with a pimp and has left her employ.  She wants Spenser to make sure April is okay.

Spenser finds Aprils but she wants to be left alone.  But Spenser can't/won't let it go, especially when April disappears and he's on the hunt to try to find her.  This leads him to discover that hookers are bought and sold and he won't give up until he finds April again.

This is the thirteenth 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 over the years (and have liked the series) and have started reading them from the beginning of the series.  Though it is part of a series, for the most part it works as a stand alone.

Susan, Spenser's love interest of 10+ years, is annoying as she's now picky and princessy.  In A Catskill Eagle, the twelfth in the series, we discovered that Susan has been cheating on Spenser before she had broken up with him and that book focused on him rescuing her from her new boyfriend.  To me, that's pretty heavy duty.  But apparently Spenser has forgiven her and they have moved on.

We first met April and Patricia in Ceremony, which was written in 1982.  At that time, April was a teenager and a hooker with no prospects.  Since she wanted to remain a hooker, Spenser connected her to Patricia so she could work for a classier establishment and be groomed by Patricia ... I had found the ending of that book a bit unbelievable.  It sounds like April didn't appreciate what she had and took off with her sleazy boyfriend who was also pimping her out.  I had a hard time believing this too ... I would have thought April would have matured by now and been a classier hooker.

I liked the writing style ... I found it humorous at times.  Spenser is a tough guy with a wisecracking sense of humour.  It's written in first person perspective in Spenser's voice.  As a head's up, there is swearing.