Title: Sudden mischief
First published: 1998
Description: Brad Sterling - former Harvard football player, ne'er-dowell, and Susan Silverman's long-out-of-touch ex-husband - is, by all appearances, a successful businessman. But when he is charged with sexual harassment in the course of running a vast fund-raiser called Galapalooza, he turns to Susan for help. Though Brad denies the charge, he's desperate, behind in alimony and child support to other exes, and on the verge of dissolution. When Spenser reluctantly agrees to the case, he finds Brad denies everything.

Sterling claims everything is fine - he is free of debt and free of problems.

While the harassment charge begins to look more and more specious, Spenser begins to sense there is something wrong with Galapalooza, when leads to charities turn into dead end. Susan, meanwhile, becomes steadily more problematic as she wrestles with demons reinvigorated by the resurrection of her ex-husband. As the questions mount, Brad disappears, a body is found, and a shadowy mob connection begins to coalesce.

Spenser finds himself fighting a two-front war: against some very bad men on the one hand, and an increasingly difficult Susan, struggling with her own resurrection, on the other.
Subjects: Private investigators, Open Library Staff Picks, Fiction, Spenser (Fictitious character), Fund raising, Sexual harassment of women, Large type books, Spenser (fictitious character), fiction, Fiction, mystery & detective, hard-boiled, Boston (mass.), fiction, Massachusetts, fiction, Private investigators, fiction, Literature and fiction, mystery and suspense
Places: Boston, Boston (Mass.), Massachusetts