Stardust is only two books away from the halfway point of Parker’s Spenser novels, and it wouldn’t be long before the series would begin to decline. Promised Land and the other Spenser novels spawned the movie Spenser: For Hire and a string of made-for-TV movies. Parker's acclaim and his thorough background in classic detective literature helped earn him the somewhat unusual commission of completing a Philip Marlowe novel that the great Raymond Chandler had left unfinished.

Best known for his portrayal of the tough but erudite investigator Spenser, Parker wrote over twenty-five novels over the course of his career, which began in 1973. Parker was one of contemporary fiction's most popular and respected detective writers. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre. Parker was 77 when he died of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts discovered at his desk by his wife Joan, he had been working on a novel. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the late 1980s a series of TV movies based on the character were also produced.

His most famous works were the novels about the private detective Spenser. Robert Brown Parker was an American crime writer. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database named Robert B.

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