When a great writer dramatizes trapped helplessness, I'm ready to eject. I almost squirmed out of reading # 22 in the Spenser series. But, this being the 27th novel I would have read in this 34 book series, I pushed like a Navy Seal through the first couple italicized segments of the kidnaping and ensuing situation, using the "hang in there" ropes provided by the characters' depth of commitment in returning Lisa St. Claire to the safety she had earned hard, by Frank Belson's side as his wife. I began clutching to hope for Frank to keep faith that Lisa wouldn't have left him willingly. I'm glad Parker didn't push the potential of dark tragedy of a soul drop like that. He worked the question just enough to rush the realism, then allow it to simmer under the diligence of "Keep the faith, baby."I won't go into detail about why Frank turned over the search to Spenser, and why Spenser went to Chollo instead of Hawk, for the first time in a rescue partnership. And, yeah, I'm asking, "What was Hawk doing in Burma?"In THIN AIR Pearl had progressed to standing on the dining table during meals, and Susan gave a humanity renewing surprise over a Mexican dinner more suitable in volume to Spenser. Dialogue scenes were evenly effervescent, with just the right amount of fizz to counter the interjections of ongoing Italicized segments. I was intrigued with the subtle shifts in patterns-of-psychosis of Lisa and her captor, as each seemed to be enduring an individual "cathexis" ... New word, probably brought into psychological jargon through the same sewer-line-purge-tank as "catharsis" ... Look up the original meaning of that one! "Cathexis" was brought into the plot by Madeline St. Claire, the current plot's previous psychiatrist for Lisa, as a sample of Lisa's uneven vocabulary expansion through reading a plethora of self-help books (too many, too indiscriminately, according to Madeline).Lisa's attempts to retain a recently seated kernel of healthy self served as an effective drama for exposing the visceral levels of retention-and-resurgence of psychological growth.Dictionary entry for Nexus: 1 - a connection. 2 - a connected group or series. 3 - the central and most important point. -ORIGIN Latin, from nectere 'bind'.A bad nexus would ultimately require a cathexis. Get yours here!Throughout the plot, I was led by the nose with curiosity about how and if Frank and Lisa would be reunited, hopefully at that central and most important point, which I was guessing would be a clean type of Love (considering Spenser's Romantic soul).Also found another key passage in THIN AIR, which exposed another appeal of this series:>> "You big with the bad guys, Spenser. You got Santiago helping you, Mr. Del Rio helping you, now this guy Broz, that I don't know, he's helping you. You sure you are a good guy?" "No," I said. I'm not sure." <