The Spenser Novels

The Godwulf Manuscript 1973
Spenser had earned his degree in the school of hard knocks, so he was ready when a Boston university hired him to recover a rare, stolen manuscript, and hardly surprised that his only clue was a radical student with four bullets in his chest. The cops were ready to throw the book at the pretty blond co-ed whose prints were all over the murder weapon, but Spenser wasn't there for easy answers. The lovely lady offered a cram course in campus love - but first there was the question of who had splashed blood on the ivory tower, some very heavy hitting howework, and the grim possibility that, if he didn't finish his assignment soon, he could end up marked D - for dead.
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God Save the Child 1974
Apple Knoll was the kind of suburban spread where kids grew up right. But something had gone wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett was gone, an assumed runaway - until the comic strip ransom note arrived. It didn't take Spenser long to get the picture - an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends like Vic harroway, a vicious body builder as eager to break heads as to pump iron. Mr. Muscle was Spenser's omly lead and he wasn't talking... except with his fists. But when push comes to shove, when a boy's life was on the line, Spenser could speak that brutal language too.
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Mortal Stakes 1975
Everybody loves a winner, and the Rabbs are major league. Marty is the Red Sox star pitcher, Linda the loving wife. She loves everyone except the blackmailer out to wreck her life. Is Marty throwing fast balls or throwing games? It doesn't take long for Spenser to link Marty's performance with Linda's past...or to find himself trapped between a crazed racketeer and an enforcer toting an M-16. America's favorite pastime has suddenly become a very dangerous sport, and one wrong move means strike three, with Spenser out for good!
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Promised Land 1976
Susan Silverman is working as a high school guidance counselor. Much more clearly than in later novels, Hawk is bad: working as an enforcer, a creature from the dark side. He does some things which a good person would not do. Plus, everyone is a lot younger. They drink and eat more, they exercise harder, and they try to do the right thing. Well, okay, some of them try to do the wrong thing. But that†s why they†re the bad guys! This is a novel of relationships: Spenser and Susan (just getting started in 1976), Spenser and Hawk (same), the woman Spenser is hired to find and her over-loving husband. The relationships are live, in constant action, and filled with risk. The characters think constantly. They talk about why they think the way they do. They explore each others lives and try to come to terms with the kind of people they all are, or were, or might become. The wise-ass repartee is tremendously appealing; it's hilarious; it couldn't be better. Winner of the 1977 Edgar Award.
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The Judas Goat 1978
Spenser had gone to London - and not to look at the queen. He'd gone to track down a bunch of bombers who'd blown his client's wife and kids away. His job was to catch them. Or kill them. is client wasn't choosy. But there were nine killers to one Spenser - long odds that could add up to a short life. Hawk, the iron fisted Boston enforcer, would help balance the equation. The rest would depend on a wild plan. Spenser would get one of the terrorists to play Judas Goat - to lead him to the others. Trouble was, he hadn't counted on her being blond, very beautiful, and very, very dangerous.
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Looking for Rachel Wallace 1980
"Rachel Wallace was a woman who wrote and spoke her mind. She made a lot of enemies--enemies who threatened her life. Spenser was a tough guy with a macho code of honor, hired to protect a woman who thought that code was obsolete. Privately, they would never see eye to eye. That's why she fired him. But when Rachel vanished, Spenser would rattle skeletons in blue-blooded family closets, tangle with the Klan, and fight for her right to be exactly what she was. He was ready to lay his life on the line to find Rachel Wallace."
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Early Autumn
1981
A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenserto get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own. Witha contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined to give a puny fifteen-year-old a crash course in survival and to beat his dangerous opponents at their own brutal game.
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A Savage Place
1981
TV reporter Candy Sloan has eyest the color of cornflowers and legs that stretch all the way to heaven. She also has somebody threatening to rearrange her lovely face if she keeps on snooping into charges of hollywood racketeering. Spenser's job is to keep Candy healthy until she breaks the biggest story of her career. But her star witness has just bowed out with three bullets in his chest, two tough guys have doubled up to test Spenser's skill with his fists, and Candy is about to use her own sweet body as live bait in a deadly romantic game - a game that may cost Spenser his life.
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Ceremony
1982
From the bestselling author of Crimson Joy. Spenser's out to make war, not love, as he goes after Boston's entire X-rated industry. Pretty teenager April Kyle has disappeared into the city's darkest underworld, and to rescue her, Spencer pits muscle and wit against bullets and bullies.
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The Widening Gyre
1983
The adoring wife of Senate Candidate Meade Alexander had a smile as sweet as candy and dotted her "i"'s with little hearts. A blond beauty, she was the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she had a little problem with sex and drugs - a problem someone had managed to put on video tape. The big boys figured a little blackmail would put her husband out of the race until Spenser hopped aboard Alexander's bandwagon.
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Valediction
1984
Spenser is hired to find a young woman who may or may not have been kidnapped by "Bullies," members of a fanatic religious sect. Paul Giacomin, his surrogate son, has brought the case to Spenser. And none too soon--for Susan Silverman's departure to San Francisco has left Spenser at loose ends in Boston. As he struggles to separate illusion from reality Spenser's capacity for ironic commitment is tested as never before by a church militant, a heroin ring, and his deepening estrangement from the woman he loves.
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Catskill Eagle
1985
In the detective business, Spenser sometimes had to bend the law. Other times, he broke it. But he lived by his own inviolate rules. He didn't kill unless he had to. He helped a friend in trouble. And he loved just one woman - even though she was the one he'd just lost. So when Susan's desperate letter arrived, Spenser didn't think twice. His best friend Hawk faced a life sentance in a california jail. And Susan had gotten herself into even bigger trouble. Now Spenser had to free them both...even if it meant breaking his own rules to do it.
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Taming a Sea Horse
1986
April Kyle, the teenage prostitute that Spenser saved in "Ceremony," has made a potentially disastrous career change: she's left the expensive brothel run by high-class madam Patricia Utley in favor of turning tricks for the man she loves - Robert Rambeaux, supposedly a student at Julliard. It doesn't take Spenser long to determine that Rambeaux's interests include more than music and his stable more than April. Spenser questions Ginger Buckey, one of Rambeaux's hookers, and the two develop a guarded affection for each other. Then April disappears.
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Pale Kings and Princes
1987
"A reporter who was prying into the cocaine trade the the central Massachusetts town of Wheaton has been murdered, and Spenser is called in to investigate. When he's rebuffed by the police and threatened by a Colombian produce dealer who may be the cocaine kingpin, it's apparent that Wheaton isn't just another small town, but a major center for the cocaine trade in the Northeast.
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Crimson Joy
1988
Robert B. Parker's private eye, Spenser, is back on the turf he knows best, a Boston of sleaze and surprises, dangerous days and deadly nights. A serial killer is in the loose in Beantown and the cops can't catch him. Called the "Red Rose Killer" because he leaves a long-stemmed red rose on each woman he slays, he's paralyzing every female who has to walk the streets after dark. But once Spenser joins the case, the murderer's trail turns toward home when a rose is left for Spenser's own Susan Silverman.
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Playmates
1989
When talent comes, can be graft be far behind? Dwayne Woodcock is arguably the best power forward in all of college basketball, not only the Big East Conference. So why, wonders Spenser, is he shaving points? Leading his Taft U. team to yet another banner season, Dwayne isn't throwing the games; he's just not winning them by enough to cover the spread. Which means that somebody's getting rich off Woodcock's on-court lapses, and Spenser's been hired by the powers at Taft to uncover the whos, hows, and whys.
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Stardust
1990
Spenser is back in the spotlight! Robert B. Parker, one of the greatest mystery writers of our time, introduces his tough-talking hero to one of the wildest clients of his career: Jill Joyce, the star of TV's Fifty Minutes. She's beautiful, bitchy, sexy--and someone is stalking her. Spenser can hardly blame the would-be assassin...until he's drawn into a nightmare that gives new meaning to the term "stage fright." STARDUST is an instant classic of hard-boiled suspense by the all-time master.
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Pastime
1991
Paul Giacomin is now twenty-five, and reconciled to his mother's wanton ways. But when Patty Giacomin vanishes, Paul begs Spenser to help him rescue her from the clutches of her boyfriend, a shady character who, he's sure, coerced her into running off. After some low-key sleuthing (much in the company of a winsome dog), Spenser learns that Paul's man-crazy mom has run off with a lowlife who's stolen a million-plus from Gerry--and that Joe, determined that his son show himself man enough to one day take over the mob, is demanding that Gerry get it back. As Spenser, accompanied by Paul, Susan Silverman, and the redoubtable Hawk, follows Patty's trail to its astonishing conclusion, he is led back, through Paul's own rites of passage, along the lanes of his own memories.
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Double Deuce
1992
Spenser finds himself, at the behest of his pal Hawk, defending the residents of a gang-terrorized Boston housing project known as Double Deuce. The drive-by shooting of a teenage mother and her child brings the duo into a confrontation with gangleader Major Johnson and his posse. At the same time, Spenser's longtime relationship with psychologist Susan is escalating, and the two agree to live together. The contrast between Spenser's cozy domestic situation (and a new relationship for the enigmatic Hawk, who reveals some of his background) and the poverty and violence of the urban projects reinforces the authenticity of this series, and its quirky appeal.
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Paper Doll
1993
Spenser is hired by Boston Brahmin Loudon Tripp to find the murderer of his conventionally impeccable wife, Olivia Nelson, whom the police consider a victim of random urban violence. After consulting with the police detective assigned to the case, a gay man whose lover is dying of AIDS, Spenser travels to Olivia's hometown in South Carolina, where his questions land him in jail, uncharged, and at the mercy of some Northern thugs. Rescued at the last minute by Boston police Lt. Quirk, the burly detective soon finds himself taken into the confidence of a sleazy but powerful Massachusetts senator. The case builds on a nicely woven mix of false identity, self-delusion and, unexpectedly, the powerful attachment of two old Southern gentlemen, one black and one white.
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Walking Shadow
1994
Hired by the Port City Theater Company's board of trustees to investgate the directors claim that he is being followed, Spenser feels like a fish out of water -- Until an actor is gunned down during a performance of a politically controversial play. Then Boston's premiere private cop and his cohort, Hawk, go into action, plunging straight into the maze of motives that constitutes a master class in the difficulty reality from appearances. Spenser soon discovers that solving the actor's murder is only a piece of the puzzle. From covert carnal connections within the community to municipal corruption with international tentacles; from petty troublemakers to major malefactors for whom murder is rarely a day at the office -- this case has everything it takes to stump the sharpest of Sherlocks. And nobody loves a challenge more than Spenser.
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Thin Air
1995
A beautiful woman vanishes, leaving Spenser to probe the mysteries of her checkered past, in a masterful work of detection that leads him on a trail of obsession and violence. Taut, wily, and witty, Robert B. Parker's Spenser thrillers are considered private-eye classics in the grand American tradition. Now, with Thin Air, he gives us a tale as haunting as a Coltrane solo, packing the wallop of a knockout punch.
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Chance
1996
The search for a Mafia princess's errant spouse lands Spenser--"one of detective fiction's best hard-boiled gumshoes" (People)--on the firing line in a gangland turf war. Once again, Robert B. Parker makes artfulness look easy, with Chance, his sensational new thriller. This time Spenser--the tough-but-tender sleuth whose passion for justice repeatedly plunges him into a sea of trouble--hires out on a marital matter whose attached strings entangle him with the Mob.
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Small Vices
1997
Spenser dies...and lives to tell the tale. "Spenser proves himself once more a modern-day knight in shining armor," cheered Publisher's Weekly of Robert B. Parker's most recent New York Times bestseller, Chance. And, said The New York Times Book Review, "Parker's stouthearted hero proves that he is still as tough and manly as they come, and more principled than ever." With Small Vices, Parker adds another masterpiece to the private-eye canon, a novel that is both galvanizing action-suspense and a complex meditation on morality and mortality, as Spenser's very future hangs in the balance.
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Sudden Mischief
1998
Spenser dies...and lives to tell the tale. "Spenser proves himself once more a modern-day knight in shining armor," cheered Publisher's Weekly of Robert B. Parker's most recent New York Times bestseller, Chance. And, said The New York Times Book Review, "Parker's stouthearted hero proves that he is still as tough and manly as they come, and more principled than ever." With Small Vices, Parker adds another masterpiece to the private-eye canon, a novel that is both galvanizing action-suspense and a complex meditation on morality and mortality, as Spenser's very future hangs in the balance.
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Hush Money
1999
This time Spenser and his buddy Hawk are helping a couple of troubled friends (i.e., they're working without a fee). The first case involves the denial of tenure for Professor Robinson Nevins. While tenure meetings are always closed-door affairs, Nevins assumes that the recent suicide of graduate student Prentice Lamont (who some claim was having an affair with Nevins) ruined his chances for a coveted permanent position. Spenser and Hawk cut a brawl-strewn path through the members of the tenure committee on their way to the surprising truth of the Nevins case. The other investigation pits Spenser against the unknown stalker of K.C. Roth. Spenser's girlfriend, Susan, has known K.C. for a while, and while the PI finds Ms. Roth a bit melodramatic, he's always eager to help a damsel in distress. The only problem is that after he's apparently resolved the case, K.C. begins a little stalking of her own--of Spenser.
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Hugger Mugger
2000
The Clive clan is one weird bunch. Take Walter's daughters, his three "fillies." Penny is like her dad, all impeccable looks and icy efficiency. Stonie and SueSue take after their sinister mom, who left the family to live with a guitarist in San Francisco and changed her name to Sherry Lark. Penny helps Dad run the business, while her soused sisters cheat on their pathetic husbands, Cord and Pud. (Pud's short for Puddle; his dad was named Poole.) As unsightly family secrets spill, Spenser feels like he's in a Tennessee Williams play. Then someone on two legs takes a bullet, and the mystery gets tense. Spenser gets plenty of sarcastic mileage out of upper-class horse-country twits, crooked security guards, dumb jocks gone to seed, and wily Southern lawyers, and the story saunters well. What's best are the endless wisecracks, the unflattering thumbnail character sketches, and sharp sentences like this one: "Like all jockeys, he was about the size of a ham sandwich, except for his hands, which appeared to be those of a stonemason."
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Pot Shot
2001
The thugs who populate the Dell, a scrubby little enclave just outside of town, have the locals in their pocket, which is why the pretty blonde who hires Spenser to find whoever killed her husband points him toward the Preacher, who rules the Dell and its denizens. But Spenser's not as certain as his client that Steve Buckman died at the Preacher's hands. As our hero and his ethnically diverse but politically incorrect henchmen (one gay shooter, one Latino, one black, one Native American--all that's missing is Annie Oakley) investigate, it turns out that Spenser's right, as usual. The action ranges from Las Vegas to L.A., Atlanta to New Mexico, but much of it is a humdrum travelogue as Spenser rounds up his gang from all over the country to take on the Preacher and his musclemen.
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Widow's Walk
2002
When fifty-one-year-old Nathan Smith, a once-confirmed bachelor, is found in his bed with a hole in his head made by a .38-caliber slug, it's hard not to imagine Nathan's young bride as the one with her finger on the trigger. Even her lawyer thinks she's guilty. But given that Mary Smith is entitled to the best defense she can afford-and thanks to Nathan's millions, she can afford plenty-Spenser hires on to investigate Mary's bona fides. Mary's alibi is a bit on the flimsy side: She claims she was watching television in the other room when the murder occurred. But the couple was seen fighting at a high-profile cocktail party earlier that evening, and the prosecution has a witness who says Mary once tried to hire him to kill Nathan. What's more, she's too pretty, too made-up, too blonde, and sleeps around-just the kind of person a jury loves to hate. Spenser's up against a wall; leads go nowhere, no one knows a thing
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Back Story
2003
In 1974, a revolutionary group calling itself The Dread Scott Brigade held up the Old Shawmut Bank in Boston's Audubon Circle. Money was stolen. And a woman named Emily Gordon, a visitor in town cashing traveler's checks, was shot and killed. No one saw who shot her. Despite security-camera photos and a letter from the group claiming responsibility, the perpetrators have remained at large for nearly three decades. Enter Paul Giacomin, the closest thing to a son Spenser has. Twice before, Spenser's come to the young man's assistance; and now Paul is thirty-seven, his troubled past behind him. When Paul's friend Daryl Gordon-daughter of the long-gone Emily-decides she needs closure regarding her mother's death, it's Spenser she turns to. The lack of clues and a missing FBI intelligence report force Spenser to reach out in every direction-to Daryl's estranged, hippie father, to Vinnie Morris and the mob, to the mysterious Ives-testing his resourcefulness and his courage. Taut, tense, and expertly crafted, this is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best.
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Bad Business
2004
Spenser #31 finds the veteran Boston PI tackling corporate crime in a routine yet absorbing outing. As usual, Spenser enters the case at an angle, this time because he's hired by one Marlene Rowley to prove that her husband Trent, CFO of energy firm Kinergy, is cheating on her. Before long the PI learns that marital cheating is all the rage among Kinergy's players, with the hanky-panky orchestrated by radio personality Darrin O'Mara, who runs popular sex seminars on the side. Maybe all that cheating explains why Spenser keeps running into other PIs hired by Kinergy folk, but it doesn't point to why Trent is found shot dead at Kinergy headquarters.
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