Spenser sets out to find a young girl who’s been suborned into prostitution. Hawk supplies the heavy backing and the requisite amount of violence at the right moment. Lost and hidden in Boston’s combat zone, it’s a squalid life, the only prospects: servicing clients in sheep ranches in Providence instead of streetwalking on Washington St. A whole industry founded on twisted morality and predators, there is no light. And yet that is what he has to work with. By the time you learn that it is the guidance counselor who is recruiting his troubled teen charges as hookers, you feel like you need a cold shower, by the time the twisted dilemma of the end comes (after you’ve rescued her all she wants to do is return to hooking, do you indulge her vice and the appeal of the life?), you feel you’ve seen things that no one should have to witness. No wonder the novel cites Yeats in its title and epitaph: the ceremony of innocence is drowned. A guided tour of hell – Massachusetts edition.