- Title: Spenser: For Hire – At the River’s Edge
- IMDb: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the mean streets of Boston and the travails of a smart ass private detective. Spenser’s (Robert Urich) latest case comes to him in an odd manner when he and Susan (Barbara Stock) witness what appears to be an armed robbery. After wounding the attacker and corning him in the parking garage, rather than be taken alive the criminal commits suicide allowing for several comments and ribbing from Spenser’s friends afterwards about his power to compel suspects to take their own lives. Spenser is left with a mystery but no client, at least until the victim’s prepubescent sister (Carrie Kei Heim) decides to hire him. Spenser makes a tenuous connection between the dead attacker and the victim, both with a connection to a preacher with a growing national following.
It only takes a single meeting with the Reverend Bobby Freemont (John Davidson) and his wife (Karen Carlson), followed by threats from a lawyer (Paul Sparer) instructing the private detective to back-off, for Spenser to smell something rotten. Two attacks on Spenser’s life later does nothing to dissuade him from his opinion as he uncovers a sexual relationship between the preacher and the young woman who was only the first his wife needed killed to keep any scent of scandal away from his congregation.
While the episode features Spenser’s youngest client, Marcella is far from his dumbest and made a smart decision indeed to in her choice of private eye. The plot of “At the River’s Edge” follows a common theme of the series, and of Robert B. Parker’s original Spenser novels, in the detective pulling back ugly layers to get to the truth. Those layers include a mixed up girl who began propositioning her father’s business associates only to find some comfort and solace in a man of god, and then, sadly, to meet her end by his power-hungry wife.
