Robert B. Parker
Robert Brown Parker (1932-2010) was a New England soul with a Massachusetts heart and Boston blood. He had a mind patient enough to play the academic game (Colby College B.A., Boston University M.A. and Ph.D.). He taught at Northeaster University from 1971-1979, notching a full professorship in 1976. He was a Korean War veteran. His first novel was published in 1971. When he left academia for full-time writing in 1979 he had had five novels published about a private eye named Spenser.
By the time his life-long wife Joan (the model for Spenser’s love, Susan Silverman) found him dead at his writing table in 2010, he had written 39 Spenser novels, 9 novels featuring Jesse Stone (a L.A. cop who retires to a New England small town), 6 novels featuring Sunny Randall (a female private eye, ex-cop, Boston-based), and 4 Westerns about Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. An assortment of other books, including an authorized sequel to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, rounded out his prolific career.
Parker rejuvenated the private eye literary field, one he loved and respected. He was a master of an ironic humor, economy of action, and an understated passionate drive in his protagonists. He had his literary jokes, but they were as often meant to puncture pretension as to wink at the reader.
After his death, Joan carried out Parker’s wishes (or his lack of territoriality) by arranging that his “properties” be continued by other writers who would respect the integrity of what he had created. I include those books here as well as Parker’s own addictive works.
Robert B. Parker's Payback [Sunny Randall #9]
Robert B. Parker's Payback [Sunny Randall #9]
In her latest thrilling adventure, PI Sunny Randall takes on two serpentine cases that converge into one deadly mystery.
PI Sunny Randall has often relied on the help of her best friend Spike in times of need. When Spike’s restaurant is taken over under a predatory loan agreement, Sunny has a chance to return the favor. She begins digging into the life of the hedge fund manager who screwed Spike over–surely a guy that smarmy has a skeleton or two in his closet–and soon finds this new enemy may have the backing of even badder criminals.
At the same time, Sunny’s cop contact Lee Farrell asks her to intervene with his niece, a college student who reported being the victim of a crime but seems to know more than she’s telling police. As the uncooperative young woman becomes outright hostile, Sunny runs up against a wall that she’s only more determined to scale.
Then, what appear to be two disparate cases are united by a common factor, and the picture becomes even more muddled. But one thing is clear: Sunny has been poking a hornet’s nest from two sides, and all hell is about to break loose.