When the local university hired Spenser to recover a stolen manuscript, his only clue was a radical student with four bullets in his chest.

The adoring wife of Senate candidate Meade Alexander has a smile as sweet as candy and dotted her i's with little hearts. A blond beauty, she was the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she had a little problem with sex and drugs -- a problem someone had managed to put on videotape.

Spenser's concern for teenage prostitute April Kyle leads him to Robert Rambeaux, her pimp. Another of Rambeaux's hookers, Ginger Buckey, is found dead shortly afterwards. When April disappears, Spenser traces a deadly relationship between sex, money and power that is not limited solely to the world of prostitution.

Private eye Spenser teams up with the cops to nab a psychotic killer who happens to be a patient of psychologist Susan Silverman, Spenser's girlfriend.

Ten years ago, Paul Giacomin's corrupt father and loose mother used the boys as a pawn in their violent race: only Spenser could call them off and straighten out the misled teen -- almost getting killed in the process. Paul is now twenty-four and reconciled to his mother's wanton ways. But when Patty Giacomin vanishes, Paul begs Spenser to help him rescue her from the clutches of her boyfriend, a shady character he's sure coerced his mother into running....

She was a model wife and mother, bludgeoned with a hammer on the streets of Beacon Hill. Spenser's searching for a motive and a murderer -- and finding more secrets than meet the eye...

A beautiful woman is kidnaped, leaving PI Spenser of Boston to probe the mysteries of her past. She is Lisa St. Claire, disk jockey and wife of a Boston policeman, a woman with a history of drugs and prostitution. The abductor turns out to be a former Latino lover.

In Boston, a female student is murdered and police arrest a black man who has a history of sexual assault. The prosecution has no problem obtaining a conviction, even though the man is not guilty. PI Spenser is hired to find the man who is.

Spenser is back and embroiled in a dangerous and multi-layered case. Someone has been killing racehorses at stables across the south, and Walter Clive, president of Three Fillies Stables, hires him to find out who. Spenser goes to Georgia to protect Hugger Mugger, a two-year-old destined to become the next Secretariat. Disregarding the resentment of the local Georgia law enforcement, he takes the case. Despite the veneer of civility, Spenser encounters...

When Nathan Smith, a prominent local banker and millionaire, is murdered, Spenser is called in to investigate Nathan's young wife, Mary, and as the evidence stacks up against her, Spenser discovers that Mary's mysterious past has put his own life in danger.