Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novel featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser have earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim, typified by R.W.B. Lewis’ comment, “We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story” (The New York Times Book Review).  He also had a national bestseller last Fall with Perish Twice, his second Sunny Randall novel.

Parker’s other works include the classic Poodle Springs, a novel completed from an unfinished manuscript begun by the late Raymond Chandler, and Perchance To Dream, the sequel to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Ironically, Parker wrote about Chandler in a chapter of his doctoral thesis about the evolution of the American Hero, beginning with the colonial period and ending with the twentieth century mystery writers. As fate would have it, Parker has now become one of the best of them: "Robert B. Parker has taken his place besides Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald" (The Boston Globe).

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Parker attended Colby College in Maine, served with the Army in Korea, and then completed a Ph.D. in English at Boston University. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. Together the Parkers founded the Pearl Productions, a Boston- Based independent film company named after their short-haired pointer, Pearl, who has also been featured in Parker’s last few novels. He and Joan now live in the Boston area.

Parker began writing his Spenser novels in 1971 while teaching at Boston’s Northeastern University. Little did he suspect then that his witty, literate prose and psychological insights would make him keeper-of-the-flame of America’s rich tradition of detective fiction. Parker’s fictional Spenser inspired the ABC-TV series Spenser: For Hire. More recently, his Spenser novels, Small Vices and Thin Air were made into television films for the A&E network.