What is the importance of gender roles in the novel, Thin Air?

As has been true from the very start of the series, the books deal in part at least with raising Spenser's consciousness about gender issues, and by the time of Thin Air he has come a long way, thanks largely to the continuing tutelage of his longtime, and often long-suffering, female companion, Susan Silverman, who manages to keep him aware of his sexist leanings. Frank Belson, Spenser's old friend from the Boston Police Department, comes to him to report that his new, and much younger wife, has gone missing, and he asks the private investigator to look into the case because Spenser can go where the officials cannot by using contacts and methods denied the police force. The search for Lisa Belson turns out to be far from a straightforward missing person's investigation, however, because Lisa has largely hidden her past from her husband. What Spenser uncovers about her and how he goes about rescuing her from her abductor forms the basis for the broadening of the plot and plunges Spenser into the scary world of the Hispaniccontrolled drug trade in a middlesized, economically-depressed Massachusetts town now run by two rival gangs.

The search for Lisa is also about the crime of stalking, and the need some men have to control the women in their lives, exploiting them for their own ego gratification. The stalking issue also brings to the surface of the novel the issue of relationships, a persistent theme of all of the Spenser books. This time the relationships are multiple and unusually complicated by Lisa's dark history and an affair she had with a Chicano just before meeting Frank and her recent marriage. In Parker's world a character's past usually comes to haunt his or her present.