As usual in a novel by Robert B. Parker featuring the private investigator known as Spenser, an enormous burden of social commentary is presented in a variety of ways, ranging from casual conversations of Spenser and his lover, Susan Silverman, a practicing psychologist, and Spenser's idle badinage with his ally Hawk, to more serious comments on society offered through development of plot and action. In the foreground of Hush Money is Spenser's investigation of the circumstances surrounding the decision of the English Department of an unnamed university to deny tenure to Robinson Nevins, an African-American scholar with conservative political and literary views.

In this novel a number of contemporary issues are treated with intelligence and irony. Spenser's investigation of the "suicide" of Prentiss Lamont, a graduate student and gay activist, leads to the revelation that the practice of "outing"—revealing a person's until-now secret homosexual...