The Godwulf Manuscript

I hear this Ace Atkinson guy is good, but I can't bring myself to read a new Spenser now that Parker has died. Instead, I've decided to re-read the first dozen or so Spensers until gal-pal Susan starts annoying me again. In this first mystery, Spenser is hired to find a medieval manuscript stolen fro......more

"The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse." Thus opens the novel that introduced Robert B. Parker's most famous creation, Boston P.I., Spenser. Spenser was a former cop who'd been fired for insubordination, and he was also a veteran of t......more

I read Robert B. Parker’s The Professional last month and wrote a long review trashing him for ruining Spenser in the last half of his career. Parker died this week, and I feel like a jackass. He had provided me a lot of enjoyment over the years and had a lot to do with turning me into the crime-mys......more

In this first of the series Spenser is on the trail of a medieval manuscript stolen from a university which is a far cry from Ivy League. Of course in today's climate that would probably be a good thing. The trail leads to murder and chicanery. But Spenser sees it through with the usual wisecracks a......more

I’m officially ashamed to call myself a private detective/noir fan. I should be beaten, flogged, and taken out to pasture. I hadn’t heard of the Spenser series until last week when I was doing some deep digging on Amazon’s bestsellers lists. It may have turned into my favorite iteration of the priva......more