Spenser novels

New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser series of crime thrillers—Book 1 in the series
“The toughest, funniest, wisest, private eye in the field these days.”—Houston Chronicle

Spenser earned his degree in the school of hard knocks, so he is ready when a Boston university hires him to recover a rare, stolen manuscript. He is hardly surpised that his only clue is a radical...

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...

Spenser has gone to London — and not to see the Queen. He's gone to track down a bunch of bombers who've blown away his client's wife and kids. His job is to catch them. Or kill them. His client isn't choosy.
But there are nine killers to one Spenser — long odds. Hawk helps balance the equation. The rest depends on a wild plan. Spenser will get one of the terrorists to play Judas Goat — to lead him to others. Trouble is, he hasn't counted...

“[Robert B.] Parker's brilliance is in his simple dialogue, and in Spenser.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
A bitter divorce is only the beginning. First the father hires thugs to kidnap his son. Then the mother hires Spenser to get the boy back. But as soon as Spenser senses the lay of the land, he decides to do some kidnapping of his own.
With a contract out on his life, he heads for the Maine woods, determined...

The house looked right. And the neighborhood was perfect. And everything else was wrong. So Spenser took the parents' money and went after a runaway girl. Unfortunately, April Kyle had already traveled two lifetimes from her suburban home. Now she was caught up in a web of pinps, criminals, and exploiters—the kinf of people who won't listen to anything but money, or a gun. . . . 
Praise for Ceremony
“Sizzling.”—The...

The most dangerous man to cross is one who isn't afraid to die. But the most deadly is one who doesn't want to live. And Spenser has just lost the woman who made life his #1 priority.
So when a religious sect kidnaps a pretty young dancer, no death threat can make Spenser cut and run. Now a hit man's bullet is wearing Spenser's name. But Boston's big boys don't know Spenser's ready and willing to meet death more than halfway.

A high-class New York madam hires Spenser to find a missing hooker, But when Spenser tracks down April Kyle, he uncovers the murder of yet another prostitute. Now Spenser is searching through a world of sex for sale. Because somewhere between Boston and a kinky Caribbean club, someone has a taste for young women, big money, and murder. . . .
Praise for Taming a Seahorse
“Irresistible!”—The Bergen Record
“A...

“Suspenseful . . . almost impossible to put down.”—Sacramento Union
In the city of the Red Sox and the Red Line someone is leaving roses—red ones, of course—on the bodies of women he kills. For a psychologist named Susan Silverman and a P.I. named Spenser, the case is personal. But Spenser knows it's the wrong man. Because the right one has come calling on Susan—with a red rose in hand.

“A...

Spenser's never had a client like 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 means the true meaning of "stage fright."

Spenser is forced by loyalty into an alien world where violence is a way of lie and outsiders enter at a lethal risk. When Spenser's cohort, Hawk, is hired by the tenants of a gang-plagued Boston housing project known as "Double Deuce", he enlists his friend's aid.
A friend's girl and her infant daughter have been gunned down. Though the act at first appears to be an accidental drive-by shooting, it soon becomes clear that it was premeditated...

PI Spenser of Boston investigates a stalking, the victim of which is a theatre company director, a probe that leaves him cold until an actor is gunned down. At that he swings into action, clashing with the Chinese Mafia and narrowly missing being killed himself.

Mafia princess Shirley Meeker wants her husband back. So does her father the kingpin and a few other shady characters. Spenser and hawk head to Vegas to find Anthony Meeker and to confirm their suspicion that all these people aren't just missing Anthony's smile. And Spenser has to make some sense of some very disorganized crime...

Susan Silverman's ex doesn't call himself "Silverman" anymore—he's changed his name to "Sterling." And that's not the only thing that's phony about him. A do-gooding charity fundraiser, he's been accused of sexual harassment by no less than four different women. And not long after Spenser starts investigating, Sterling is wanted for a bigger charge: murder...

Spenser is back and embroiled in a dangerous and multi-layered case. Someone has been killing racehorses at stables across the south, and Walter Clive, president of Three Fillies Stables, hires him to find out who. Spenser goes to Georgia to protect Hugger Mugger, a two-year-old destined to become the next Secretariat. Disregarding the resentment of the local Georgia law enforcement, he takes the case. Despite the veneer of civility, Spenser encounters...

One of Boston’s elite has been murdered. The accused is his new wife. She’s blonde, beautiful, and young. The jury’s going to hate her. With next-to-no alibi, and multi-million reasons to kill her husband, she needs the best defense money can buy. His name is Spenser, and he’d give anything to believe her.

One of the great series in the history of the American detective story gets even better when Spenser is hired by a jilted bride to follow a cheating husband, only to cross paths with a detective hired to tail the two-timing wife. They aren't the most trusting couple in town, but as it turns out, they are the most dangerous.

Lily Ellsworth the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark's alleged involvement in a school shooting. Though seven people were killed in cold blood, and despite Jared's being named as a co-conspirator by the other shooter, Mrs. Ellsworth is convinced of her grandson's innocence.

Investigating a case of infidelity sounds simple—until it plunges Spenser and his beloved Susan into a politically charged murder plot that’s already left three people dead.

Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years she's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they've all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower--and now he's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower "cease and desist," so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, Spenser's assignment...

When infamous actor Jumbo Nelson is accused of rape and murder, the Boston PD calls on Spenser to make heads or tails of the case. Although the evidence is mounting against Jumbo, Spenser makes a break when he teams up with Jumbo's bodyguard, Zebulon Sixkill, and uncovers some secrets involving the murder victim.

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 heavy-handed developer is trying to buy up Henry's condo on Revere Beach and sends thugs to move the process along. Soon Spenser and his apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, find a trail leading to a mysterious and beautiful woman, a megalomaniacal Las Vegas kingpin, and plans to turn to a chunk of land north of Boston...

“Atkins gives Robert B. Parker’s long-running series one of its best installments to date” (Bookreporter.com) as Spenser investigates the kidnapping of a football player’s son.
Kinjo Heywood is one of the New England Patriots’ marquee players—a hard-nosed linebacker who’s earned his standing as one of the toughest guys in the league. He may be worth millions but his connection to a nightclub shooting...

"The fire at a boarded-up Catholic church raged hot and fast, lighting up Boston's South End and killing three firefighters who were trapped in the inferno. A year later, as the city prepares to honor their sacrifice, there are still no answers about how the deadly fire started. Most at the department believe it was just a simple accident: faulty wiring in a century-old building. But Boston firefighter Jack McGee, who lost his best friend in the blaze,...

"Iconic, tough-but-tender Boston PI Spenser delves into the black market art scene to investigate a decades-long unsolved crime of dangerous proportions. The heist was legendary, still talked about twenty 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...

"When his apprentice Mattie's childhood friend from the South Boston housing projects is murdered, Spenser traces the victim's demise to an international sex-trafficking ring that has been operating with impunity under the protection of a well-connected billionaire"--