Mystery Novelist Robert B. Parker Dies at 77

Robert B. Parker, whose spare, eloquent prose turned wisecracking private investigator Spenser into one of the country’s most recognizable fictional characters, died in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home Monday, January 18th.

Mr. Parker published 65 books in 37 years, with Spenser featured in 37 of those titles which inspired the 1980’s television series Spenser: For Hire, starring Robert Urich. He also wrote 28 other books, including a series each for Jesse Stone, the police chief of fictional Paradise, Massachusetts, and Sunny Randall, a female PI in Boston. His book Appaloosa, his 2005 Western, was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris.

In 2002, he was named Grand Master at the Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America, and has sold more than four million copies of his books around the world.

Mr. Parker, who would publish up to three books a year, said he would write 10 pages a day, often not knowing “who did it” until near the end of the book. “I don’t rewrite, I don’t write a second draft,” he said in a 2005 interview. “When I am finished, I don’t reread it. Joan [his wife] reads it to make sure I haven’t committed a public disgrace, and, if I haven’t, I send it in. Then I begin the next book.”

His latest book, Split Image, part of the Jesse Stone series, is due out next month and the fourth Western, Blue-Eyed Devil, will be released in May. More titles, including some Spenser novels, are “in the pipeline,” said Mr. Parker’s editor, Chris Pepe of G.P. Putnam Sons.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Parker leaves two sons, David and Daniel.

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