Ebullient entertainment. -Time

A hotshot reporter is dead. He’d gone to take a look-see at Miami North -little Wheaton, Massachusetts-the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line.

Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth … or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband?

Spenser will stop at nothing to find out.

Praise for Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels

Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action … but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction. -Newsweek

Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing … Unexpectedly literate-[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species. -The New York Times

They just don’t make private eyes tougher or funnier. -People

Parker has a recorder’s ear for dialogue, an agile wit … and, strangely enough, a soupcon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior. -Los Angeles Times

A deft storyteller, a master of pace. -The Philadelphia Inquirer

Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero. -The Chicago Sun-Times

[Spenser is] tough, intelligent, wisecracking, principled, and brave. -The New Yorker