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 Buried Secrets: A Jesse Stone Novel
Robert B. Parker's Buried Secrets: A Jesse Stone Novel
Police Chief Jesse Stone investigates the mystery behind a dead body found strewn with photos of murder victims and placed on top of $2 million in cash, before a mob of hit men converge on Paradise.
Just another day in Paradise . . .
Chief of Police Jesse Stone is on his way home from a long shift when a call comes in for a welfare check on an elderly resident of the wealthy seaside town of Paradise, Massachusetts. Inside a house packed with junk and trash is a man’s dead body. It’s a sad, lonely end, but nothing criminal . . . until Jesse finds the photos of murder victims strewn around the corpse, on top of a treasure trove of $2 million in cash.
Jesse takes on the case and finds a trail leading to an aging mobster who will do whatever it takes to keep the past from coming to light. Before long, Jesse has a price on his head as hit men converge on Paradise to take back the cash and destroy any remaining evidence. But the real danger might be coming from inside his own department. Jesse Stone must unearth the truth buried under the wreckage of a dead man’s life . . . before he winds up in the ground himself.