Early Autumn is one of my favorite Spenser books. If you have somehow managed to miss them, Robert B. Parker wrote a series of books around a private Investigator, Spenser, based in Boston. There are reccuring characters in the series including Spenser's girlfriend, Susan, his best friend and colleague, Hawk, and a young man who is like a son to him, Paul. Paul is introduced in this book.
When we first meet Paul, he doesn't have much of a sense of self. He has been used as a pawn between two parents who are now divorced, and they have never really encouraged him to do much of anything or taught him any life skills. In this book, Spenser is basically hired to return Paul to his mother. His father has abducted him, again, not for any strong feelings about his boy per se, but because it was a good power move to use against the mother. Spenser gets the boy back, realizes that neither parent really cares about Paul at all, and he and Paul end up spending time in a cabin in Maine, where Spenser begins to teach Paul some skills, some ways to find himself.
It's a sweet book. Amongst the snappy dialogue, there is tenderness and wisdom. It's a book that can be read in an afternoon and then started over. It's written poetically. For such a modest book, it carries considerable weight.
http://books.google.com/books?id=sYPBwy3O4hMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Robert+Parker,+Early+Autumn&source=bl&ots=qDlquDwgBu&sig=SVNIekHhtYSWmvr7Gt_eo_OPraU&hl=en&ei=ehq8TcG6O4u-sAO204zGBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
