Showing results by author "Robert B Parker" in All Categories

When Marlene Cowley hires Spenser to see if her husband Trent is cheating on her, he encounters more than he bargained for: not only does he find a two-timing husband, but a second investigator as well, hired by the husband to look after his wife. As a result of their joint efforts, Spenser soon finds himself investigating both individual depravity and corporate corruption.

Called upon by The Hammond Museum and renowned art scholar Dr. Ashton Prince, 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. Convinced that Ashton Prince played a bigger role than just ransom delivery boy, Spenser enters into a daring game of cat-and-mouse with the thieves....

A brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of a classic Raymond Chandler mystery featuring private eye, Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is now married, living in the resort town of Poodle Springs. Once again, he sets himself up as an investigator and soon finds himself in the middle of blackmail and murder....

The Sternwood family, immortalized in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, is in trouble again. Lovely Vivian's psychotic sister, Carmen, has disappeared from the sanitarium, and Vivian herself has once again fallen into the clutches of the shady underworld character Eddie Mars. Enter Philip Marlowe, the original tough-but-tender private eye, resurrected by Robert B. Parker, creator of his own phenomenally popular Spenser mystery series. He saved the Sternwoods once before. The question is: Can he do it again?

In Stone Cold, Police Chief Jesse Stone has a problem - actually, two problems - dead bodies turning up, and no clues. A man takes his dog out for a run on the beach, only to be discovered hour later with two holes in his chest. A woman drives her Volvo to the mall to do some grocery shopping, never makes it back to her house and is found dead. Investigating a serial killer in an affluent suburban town is difficult, and with the added pressures from the town selectmen and media, the heat is turned up on Jesse. The harder these outside forces push against him, the more Jesse retreats into himself, convinced - despite all the odds - that it's up to him alone to stop the killing.

Kinjo Heywood is one of the New England Patriots’ marquee players - a hard-nosed linebacker who’s earned his reputation as one of the toughest guys in the league. When off-field violence repeatedly lands Heywood in the news, his slick agent hires Spenser to find the men who he says have been harassing his client.

It is the winter of 1879, and Dodge city has lost its snap. Thirty-one-year-old Wyatt Earp, assistant city marshal, loads his wife and all they own into a wagon, and goes with two of his brothers and their women to Tombstone, Arizona, land of the silver mines. There Earp becomes deputy sheriff, meeting up with the likes of Doc Holliday, Clay Allison and Bat Masterson as well as finding the love of his life, showgirl Josie Marcus.

It’s been a long time since Jesse Stone left L.A., and still longer since the tragic injury that ruined his chances for a major league baseball career. When Jesse is invited to a reunion of his old Triple-A team at a hip New York City hotel, he is forced to grapple with his memories and regrets over what might have been. He left more behind him than unresolved feelings about the play that ended his baseball career. The darkly sensuous Kayla, his former girlfriend and current wife of an old teammate is there in New York...

Hired by a wealthy family to locate their teenage daughter, Sunny Randall, a former cop turned Boston P.I., soon finds herself the bodyguard for a difficult teenager who refuses to return to her family. But before long, Sunny is facing greater problems than she ever imagined including a criminal conspiracy that reaches to the top of the state government.

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 24 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.

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, Spencer immediately senses that his client's picture-perfect portrayal of his family life is false. For starters, the victim's reputation is too saintly, her house is as lived-in as a stage set, and her troubled children don't appear to be the product of a happy home.

Buddy Bollen is a C-list movie mogul who made his fortune producing films of questionable artistic merit. When Buddy hires Sunny Randall to protect his rising star and girlfriend, Erin Flint, Sunny knows from the start that the prickly, spoiled beauty won't make her job easy. And when Erin's sister, Misty, is found dead in the lavish home they share with sugar daddy Bollen, there doesn't seem to be a single lead worth pursuing.

The heist was legendary, still talked about 20 years after the priceless paintings disappeared from one of Boston's premier art museums. Most thought the art was lost forever, buried deep, sold off overseas, or, worse, destroyed as incriminating evidence. But when paint chips from the most valuable piece stolen, Gentlemen in Black by a Spanish master, arrives at the desk of a Boston journalist, the museum finds hope and enlists Spenser's help.

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 CIA. She fell so hard for M. Brooks Welles that she wrote him a check for almost 300,000 dollars, hoping for a big return on her investment. But within weeks, both Welles and her money are gone. Her therapist, Dr. Susan Silverman, hands her Spenser's card.

It is 1947 when Joseph Burke, ex-Marine, ex-husband, ex-somebody–is hired as a bodyguard to protect Lauren Roach, 25 and spoiled rotten. The unlikely duo becomes entangled with Burke’s boyhood hero, color-barrier breaking baseball player Jackie Robinson, in a story that is both thrilling and engaging. It is in the historical character Jackie Robinson that Mr. Parker finds inspiration and Joseph Burke may find his redemption. This is a work of fiction about a real man. Most of what I’ve written I’ve made up. I have, however, attempted to render Jackie Robinson accurately. As he was, or as I imagined him to be, in 1947, when I was turning 15, and he was changing the world. The rest is altogether fiction. It may be more Burke’s story then Jackie’s story. But, without Jackie, Burke would have had no story. And neither would I. Robert B Parker.

When Robin Nevins, the son of Hawk's boyhood mentor, is denied at an exclusive university, Hawk asks Spenser to investigate. It seems the denial is tied to the suicide of a young gay activist, and as Spenser digs deeper, he is nearly drowned in a multicultural swamp of politics: black, gay, academic, and feminist. At the same time, Spenser's inamorata, Susan, asks him to come to the aid of an old college friend, K.C. Roth, the victim of a stalker. Spenser solves the problem a bit too effectively when K.C. turns the tables and begins to stalk him.

Henry Cimoli and Spenser have been friends for years, yet the old boxing trainer has never asked the private eye for a favor. Until now. A developer is trying to buy up Henry's condo on Revere Beach - with a push from local thugs. Soon, Spenser and his apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, are on the trail of a mysterious woman, a megalomaniacal Las Vegas kingpin, and a shady plan to turn a chunk of land north of Boston into a sprawling casino. As alliances shift and twisted dreams surface, the Boston political machine looks to end Spenser's investigation one way or another.

Brad Sterling - former Harvard football player, ne¿er-do-well, and Susan Silverman's long out-of touch ex-husband, is by all appearances a successful businessman. But when, in the course of running a vast fundraiser called Galapalooza, he is charged with sexual harassment, he turns to Susan for help.

Big-time Boston hoodlum Julius Ventura wants to find his only daughter's missing husband—at least that's how he puts it to Spenser and Hawk, even though its pretty clear that Julius isn't telling the whole truth. Or maybe not any part of the truth. Something about the case appeals to Spenser's passion for justice, and he launches an odyssey that takes the tough-but-tender duo with their penchant for literary allusions into the netherworld of organized crime.

Young Spenser is tough. No doubt about it. After all, he's being raised by his father and uncles - three of the toughest men in town. He knows how to fight, and he's had to prove it. But his father taught him something far more valuable: Sometimes the toughest thing a guy can do is walk away from a fight. So when Spenser sees his friend Jeannie being taken in a boat downriver by her abusive father, he knows he has a hard decision to make. Should he trust his gut and risk his own life to save Jeannie's? And if so, how can he overcome such a bear of a man?