Spenser novels

New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser series of crime thrillers - Book 2 in the series -
Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away — until the comic strip ransom note arrives.  It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture — an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends...friends...

Spenser is good at finding things. But this time he has a client out on Cape Cod who is in over his head. Harvey Shepard has lost his pretty wife -- and a very pretty quarter million bucks in real estate. Now a loan shark is putting on the bite. Spenser finds himself doing a slow burn in the Cape Cod sun. The wife has turned up as a hot suspect in a case of murder one ... the in-hock hubby has 24 hours before the mob makes him dead ... and suddenly...

“Crackling dialogue, plenty of action, and expert writing.”—The New York Times
Rachel Wallace is a tough young woman with a lot of enemies. 
Spenser is a tough guy with a macho code of honor, hired to protect a woman who thinks that kind of code is obsolete. Privately, they will never see eye to eye.
But when Rachel vanishes. Spenser is ready to lay his life on the line—to find Rachel Wallace.
“A...

TV reporter Candy Sloan has eyes 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...

The adoring wife of a senatorial candidate has a smile as sweet as candy and dots her "i's" with little hearts. A blond beauty, she is the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she has a little problem with sex and drugs—a problem someone has managed to put on videotape.
The big boys figure a little blackmail will put her husband out of the race. Until Spenser hops on the candidate's bandwagon.
But getting back the tape of the lady's...

Spenser loves just one woman, even though she's the one he's just lost. So when her desperate letter arrives, he doesn't think twice. He has to free his best friend from a life sentence, and get Susan out of trouble.

“Ebullient entertainment.”—Time
A hotshot reporter is dead. He'd gone to take a look-see at “Miami North”—little Wheaton, Massachusetts—the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line.
Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth . . . or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband?
Spenser will stop at nothing to find out.
Praise for Robert B. Parker's...

Spenser goes back to school-to investigate corruption in college town. Taft University's hottest basketball star is shaving points for quick cash. And if Spenser doesn't watch his own footwork, the guilty parties will shave a few years off his life ...

Ten years ago, Paul Giacomin's corrupt father and loose mother used the boys as a pawn in their violent race: only Spenser could call them off and straighten out the misled teen -- almost getting killed in the process. Paul is now twenty-four 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 he's sure coerced his mother into running....

Boston PI Spenser investigates the perfect murder in this New York Times bestselling mystery in Robert B. Parker’s acclaimed series.
She was a model wife and mother, bludgeoned with a hammer on the streets of Beacon Hill. Spenser's searching for a motive and a murderer—and finding more secrets than meet the eye...
“Among the best Spensers...Parker's at the top of his game!”—Boston Globe...

When Lisa St. Claire, the beautiful young bride of a Boston police detective vanishes mysteriously, Spenser joins the search for the missing woman, following a dangerous trail that leads him to a sociopathic Latino ex-lover and into a deadly confrontation with Lisa's dark past.

The bad kid from the 'hood has a long, long record, but did he really murder the white coed from ritzy Pemberton College? His former lawyers believe that he was framed, and they hire Spenser and Hawk to uncover the truth. Plumbing the depths of the seamy side of life, they encounter a no man's land of twisted cops and spoiled rich kids with peculiar private proclivities. When a master assassin's bullet takes Spenser down, he survives the attack but...

Spenser has his hands full when he takes on two cases at once. In the first, a high-minded university might be hiding a killer within a swamp of political correctness. And in the other, Spenser comes to the aid of a stalking victim, only to find himself the unwilling object of the woman's dangerous affections ...

Boston P.I. Spenser returns—heading west to the rich man’s haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of their high-flying lifestyles.
Potshot overcame its rough reputation as a rendezvous for old-time mountain men who lived off the land, thanks to a healthy infusion of new blood and even newer money. But when this western idyll...

In Robert B. Parker's most popular series, an unsolved thirty-year-old-murder draws the victim's daughter out of the shadows for overdue justice-and lures Spenser into his own past, old crimes, and dangerous lives.

When his closest ally, Hawk, is beaten and left for dead while protecting a bookie, Spenser embarks on an epic journey to rehabilitate his best pal, body and soul. But that means infiltrating a ruthless mob—and redefining his friendship with Hawk in the name of vengeance...

“Cold Service moves with the speed of light.”—Orlando Sentinel

Spenser, a Boston PI, is once again hired by April Kyle who was a teenage runaway that turned to prostitution. Now she is a madam of an up-scale, all-female operation that some men are trying to take away from her. April claims she doesn't know who is after her business, but Spenser finds ties to organized crime. Spenser without much surprise also finds that April, the thugs and everyone else involved is lying to him.

Parker once again proves he is a force of nature in this mystery where a hurricane hinders a kidnapping and Spenser goes on a search for the man responsible--the infamous Gray Man, who has both helped and hunted Spenser in the past.

Called upon by The Hammond Museum and renowned art scholar Dr. Ashton Prince, Boston PI Spenser accepts his latest case: to provide protection during a ransom exchange-money for a stolen painting. The case becomes personal when Spenser fails to protect his client and the valuable painting remains stolen.

"Spenser takes up a seemingly open and closed cold case at the behest of a street-wise 16 year old girl, who believes her mother's murderers went free. As Spenser digs deeper into the mystery, he finds a much more dangerous and complex mystery than he bargained for"--

"It's December in Boston, and Spenser is busy planning the menu for Christmas dinner when he's confronted in his office by a young boy named Slide. Homeless and alone, Slide has found refuge with an organization named Street Business, which gives shelter and seeks job opportunities for the homeless and lost. Slide's mentor, Jackie Alvarez, is being threatened, and Street Business is in danger of losing its tenuous foothold in the community, turning...

"What started out as a joke landed seventeen-year-old Dillon Yates in a lockdown juvenile facility in Boston Harbor. When he set up a prank Twitter account for his vice principal, he never dreamed he could be brought up on criminal charges, but that's exactly what happened. This is Blackburn, Massachusetts, where zero tolerance for minors is a way of life. Leading the movement is tough-as-nails Judge Joe Scali, who gives speeches about getting tough...

Boston PI Spenser and right hand Hawk follow a con man's trail of smoke and mirrors in the latest entry of the iconic crime series. After conning everyone from the cable news shows to the local cops, it looks like the grifter's latest double cross may be his last. Connie Kelly thought she'd found her perfect man on an online dating site. He was silver-haired and handsome, with a mysterious background working for the C.I.A. She fell so hard for M....

"In the latest thriller featuring the legendary Boston PI, Spenser heads to the City of Angels to meet old friends and new enemies in a baffling missing person case that might shake Tinseltown to its core"-- Gabby Leggett left Boston with big dreams of making it as a model/actress in Hollywood. Two years later, when she disappears from her apartment, her family-- and the police-- have no idea where she is and no leads. Leggett's mother hires Spenser...

Carolina Garcia-Ramirez is a rising star in national politics, taking on the establishment with her progressive agenda. Tough, outspoken, and driven, the young congresswoman has ignited a new conversation in Boston about race, poverty, health care, and the environment. Now facing her second campaign, she finds herself not only fighting a tight primary with an old guard challenger but also contending with numerous death threats coming from hundreds...