Back Story

New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2003. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. John Earle (Author photograph). 291, [3] pages. Robert Brown Parker (September 17, 1932 - January 18, 2010) was an American writer of fiction, primarily of the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character was also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and best-selling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre. Parker also wrote two other series based on an individual character: He wrote nine novels based on the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town, and six novels based on the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator. Parker wrote four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. Spenser tries to solve a thirty-year-old murder as a favor to an old friend, in this brilliant new mystery from the Grand Master. In 1974, a revolutionary group calling itself the Dread Scott Brigade held up the old Shawmut Bank in Boston's Audubon Circle. Money was stolen. And a woman named Emily Gordon, a visitor in town cashing traveler's checks, was shot and killed. No one saw who shot her. Despite security camera photos and a letter from the group claiming responsibility, the perpetrators have remained at large for nearly three decades. Enter Paul Giacomin, the closest thing to a son Spenser has. Twice before, Spenser has come to the young man's assistance; and now Paul is in his thirties, his troubled past behind him. When Paul's friend Daryl Gordon--daughter of the long-gone Emily--decides she needs closure about the matter of her mother's death, it's Spenser she turns to. The lack of clues, and the fact that an FBI intelligence report is missing, force Spenser to reach out in every direction and test his resourcefulness and courage.
Taut, tense, and expertly crafted, this is Robert B. Parker at his storytelling best. Derived from a Kirkus review: What a guy that Spenser is. For a retainer of half a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts—two of them consumed on the spot by his old friend, playwright Paul Giacomin, and his friend, actress Daryl Silver—he agrees to look again into the death of Daryl's mother, Emily Gordon, who was shot down when a revolutionary group calling itself the Dread Scott Brigade robbed the Audubon Circle branch of the Old Shawmut Bank. The main problems facing Spenser are that (1) the fatal bank robbery took place way back in 1974, in a hazy world few people remember and even fewer want to; (2) the FBI report on the robbery and the Dread Scott Brigade has vanished with nary a trace of accidental misfiling; and (3) a Boston strongman named Sonny Karnofsky sends goons with guns to Spenser's place to make it clear that he wants Spenser to let sleeping dogs lie, though not why that's what he'd prefer. Of course, Spenser's made plenty of enemies in his 30-year career, but it's rare that a single case has estranged the mob, the Feebees, and his own client, who's so stung by the less-than-edifying revelations he digs up about her parents that she demands he shut down the investigation and stalks out of his office. Now if only Sonny Karnofsky and Co. believed he was really quitting. But Spenser is not without the usual resources: his backup/buddy Hawk, his kill-who-you-need-to bedtime shrink Susan, and his bulldog certainty that you can't let go just because everybody around you tells you to. Mystery buffed to a high gloss. Parker has made male posturing into an art form.