Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues

Tougher, stronger, better educated, and far more amusing than Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe or Lewis Archer

When it comes to detective novels, 90 per cent of us admit he's an influence, and the rest of us lie about it

Spenser is a constant revelation for even long-time Parker fans

One of the great series in the history of the detective story

Reading Parker is like swimming downstream in a river of adrenalin

Spenser gives the tribe of hard-boiled wonders a new vitality and complexity

The sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read-about private eye around today . . . the legitimate heir to the Hammett-Chandler-Macdonald tradition

Nobody does it better

Reading a Spenser novel is like a family reunion - it makes one feel good

'No one understands what makes Bob Parker's Jesse Stone tick better than Michael Brandman - and Michael is just the writer to carry Jesse into the future' Tom Selleck.