When Spenser accepts a job as a "bodyguard" for a beautiful young woman, he gets in way over his head. "(Spenser) gives the connoisseur of that rare combination of good detective fiction and good literature a chance to indulge himself".--The Boston Globe.

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 number-one priority. So when a religious sect kidnaps a pretty young dancer, no death threat from the fanatics or their mobster friends con make the tough detective 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...

When the local university hired Spenser to recover a stolen manuscript, his only clue was a radical student with four bullets in his chest.

Spenser investigates when the wife of the Boston Red Sox star pitcher is being blackmailed.

Private-eye Spenser is in Hollywood to protect a beautiful reporter investigating corruption and racketeering in the movie industry, and together they search for a murderer in Tinsel Town.

Certain that his mother's shady boyfriend is behind her disappearance, Paul Giacomin calls upon the skills of Spenser to help him find his missing mother. The most personal and revealing Spenser thriller of all, PASTIME is Robert B. Parker's electrifying masterpiece of crime fiction -- a startling game of memory, desire and danger that forces Spenser to face his own past. Ten years ago, he saved a teenage boy from a father's rage. Now, on the brink...

"She was a model wife and mother, bludgeoned with a hammer on the streets of Beacon Hill. Spenser's searching for a motive and a murderer -- and finding more secrets than meet the eye ..."--Cover, p. [4].

In Boston, a girl student is murdered and police arrest a black man who has a history of sexual assault. The prosecution has no problem obtaining a conviction, even though the man is not guilty. PI Spenser is hired to find the man who is.

Thirty years after an unsolved bank robbery leaves a woman dead, Paul Giacomin, whom Spenser regards like a son, and Daryl Gordon, the son of the robbery victim, turn to Spenser to seek out clues about the crime.

Spenser, a Boston PI, is once again hired by April Kyle who was a teenage runaway that turned to prostitution. Now she is a madam of an up-scale, all-female operation that some men are trying to take away from her. April claims she doesn't know who is after her business, but Spenser finds ties to organized crime. Spenser without much surprise also finds that April, the thugs and everyone else involved is lying to him.