Spenser novels

"Apple Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is very wrong. When fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears, everyone thinks he's run away--until the comic strip ransom note arrives. It doesn't take Boston PI Spenser long to get the picture: an affluent family seething with rage, a desperate boy making strange friends like bodybuilder Vic Harroway. Mr. Muscle is Spenser's only lead and he isn't talking--except with his...

Private investigator Spenser leaves Boston for summertime Cape Cod where he and his friend Susan Silverman find themselves involved with fools and villains whose concerns are extortion, robbery, and murder.

When Spenser accepts a job as a "bodyguard" for a beautiful young woman, he gets in way over his head. "(Spenser) gives the connoisseur of that rare combination of good detective fiction and good literature a chance to indulge himself".--The Boston Globe.

Spenser is in Hollywood to protect television reporter Candy Sloan, and together they search for a murderer.

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.

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.

Spenser is called in to investigate the murder of a reporter working on a story about the cocaine trade. Threats by the local police and a Columbian produce dealer lead Spenser to dig deeper.

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 ...

Certain that his mother's shady boyfriend is behind her disappearance, Paul Giacomin calls upon the skills of Spenser to help him find his missing mother. The most personal and revealing Spenser thriller of all, PASTIME is Robert B. Parker's electrifying masterpiece of crime fiction-- a startling game of memory, desire and danger that forces Spenser to face his own past. Ten years ago, he saved a teenage boy from a father's rage. Now, on the brink...

Hired by Loudon Tripp, an aggrieved Boston aristocrat who believes his late wife Olivia's brutal street slaying to be something other than random violence, Spenser suspects that Tripp's picture-perfect version of his family's life is false.

"Her name is Lisa St. Claire. Her husband's a cop. Her whereabouts are unknown. Spenser thought he could help a friend find his missing wife. Until he learned the nasty truth about Lisa St. Claire. For starters, it's not her real name ..."--Page 4 of cover.

In Boston, a girl student is murdered and police arrest a black man who has a history of sexual assault. The prosecution has no problem obtaining a conviction, even though the man is not guilty. PI Spenser is hired to find the man who is.

PI Spenser investigates charges of discrimination made by a black professor who was denied tenure at a New England university. The professor claims there was a conspiracy to brand him as a homosexual.

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...

During a 1974 holdup in a Boston bank by a revolutionary group calling itself the Dread Scott Brigade, Emily Gordon is shot and killed. Nobody saw who shot her and the perpetrators have remained at large for three decades. Emily's daughter decides she needs closure regarding her mother's death so she turns to Spenser to find the answers.

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.

Reluctantly escorting the gold-digging and recently separated Heidi Bradshaw to her daughter's wedding, Boston private investigator Spenser hopes to reconnect with his beloved Susan at the wedding, but becomes enmeshed in a kidnapping plot involving his nemesis Rugar.

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 teen-age 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. When fourteen-year-old Mattie Sullivan asks Spenser to look into her mother's murder, he's not completely convinced by her claim that the police investigation four years ago was botched. Mattie...

"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...

"P.I. Spenser, knight-errant of the Back Bay, returns in this stellar addition to the iconic New York Times-bestselling series from author Ace Atkins. 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,...

Boston PI Spenser and right hand Hawk follow a con man’s trail of smoke and mirrors in this thrilling entry in Robert B. Parker’s long-running series.
 
Connie Kelly thought she’d found her perfect man on an online dating site. She fell so hard for handsome, mysterious M. Brooks Welles that she wrote him a check for almost three hundred thousand dollars, hoping for a big return on her investment. But within weeks,...

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 her Boston family with dreams of making it big as a model/actress in Hollywood. Two years later, she disappears from her apartment. Her family, former boyfriend, friends—and the police—have no idea where she is and...

"Carolina Garcia-Ramirez is taking on the establishment with her progressive agenda. When her chief of staff reaches out to Spenser for security and help finding the culprits of what he believes to be the most credible threats, Garcia-Ramirez is less than thrilled. She's used to the antipathy and intimidation women of color often face when seeking power. To her, it's all noise. But it doesn't take long for Spenser to cross paths with an extremist...