Book 14

Pale Kings and Princes

by Robert Parker

Published 10 June 1988
“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 novels

“Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action . . . but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction.”Newsweek

“Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing . . . Unexpectedly literate—[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species.”The New York Times
 
“They just don’t make private eyes tougher or funnier.”People
 
“Parker has a recorder’s ear for dialogue, an agile wit . . . and, strangely enough, a soupçon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior.”Los Angeles Times
 
“A deft storyteller, a master of pace.”The Philadelphia Inquirer
 
“Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.”The Chicago Sun-Times
 
“[Spenser is] tough, intelligent, wisecracking, principled, and brave.”The New Yorker

Book 24

Small Vices

by Robert Parker

Published 1 March 1998

Ellis Alves is a bad kid from the 'hood with a long record, but did he really murder Melissa Henderson, a white student from ritzy Pemberton College? Alves's former lawyers think he was framed, and they hire Spenser to uncover the truth. From Boston's back streets to Manhattan's elite, Spenser and Hawk search for suspects, including Melissa's rich kid tennis-star boyfriend. But when a man with a .22 puts Spenser in a coma, the hope for justice might just die along with the detective...