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.

“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 soupçon 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