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Never Keeping Secrets A friendly reunion filled with secrets & scandals

Little Green Walter Mosley's latest page-turner is here!

Never Say Never Victoria Christopher Murray’s emotionally charged and inspiring novel

One Way To Heaven Hell hath no fury like a ride or die chick scorned!

Robert B. Parker

A note from the Author: "First, the disclaimer: I do not have a plan. I do not know what the next chapter in my current book will be, let alone what I'll do in some future book, so read my answers in that context... I never said I had foresight. Joan has not said that of me, either." -Robert B. Parker

In your latest book, Spenser and Susan seem to be as strong as ever. You've discussed marriage for them in the past. Do you think they will ever tie the knot?
I doubt that they will ever marry. They are the kind of people whom you'd expect it of, but somehow it doesn't seem quite proper, at the moment, anyway. They tried living together in DOUBLE DEUCE, and the conflicting force of their equal and individual autonomy made that arrangement not really workable. They seem to have found a way to love each other and be together with out quite being submerged in each other.

Do you plan on ever having Hawk find a "Susan," someone to lean on? He came close with Cecile in COLD SERVICE, will she return?
Hawk doesn't lean on anyone, and is quite unlikely to start. Cecile, aside from her value to the plot of COLD SERVICE, was also a way of assessing whether Hawk was capable of a Susan. He, at least, concluded that he is not. From my perspective, again, it doesn't seem to work.

In THE PROFESSIONAL, we meet a new character, Zell, who seems to fall under the same code of ethics some of Spenser's other acquaintances possess. Will he, like Chollo and Teddy Sapp, appear again?
ell will reappear if there's an occasion for him to do so (see disclaimer above). I never create a character for future use, but if they're around in the future and a use for them develops, I re-employ them. Thus Vinnie, Chollo, Bobby Horse, Teddy Sapp, Tony Marcus, etc. were all created ad hoc (as was Hawk in PROMISED LAND) and come and go as they are needed. Their loyalty to Spenser is, of course, a way of reminding the reader how compelling Spenser is.

Will Spenser ever meet your two other characters, Jesse Stone or Sunny Randall? Speaking of Sunny Randall, will there be a new book in that series?
Spenser and Hawk have briefly met Jesse Stone in BACK STORY and Sunny Randall receives ongoing psychotherapy from Susan Silverman. Sunny is now appearing with some regularity in the Jesse Stone novels, as Jesse's main squeeze. I don't know what the future holds. I think it is particularly interesting to see Susan through the eyes of an intelligent and admiring patient. It does for Susan what I think Vinnie and Chollo et al do for Spenser (see #3 above).

You've started exploring Spenser's past with the Young Spenser series-do you think you will ever do a Young Hawk book? His childhood experiences would be fascinating to learn.
I don't know enough about Hawk, including his childhood, to do a standalone Hawk book. He works best when seen through Spenser's eyes, as he was in HUSH MONEY, where we do learn something about his early years.

Will Paul Giacomin ever provide Spenser and Susan with a grandchild?
I doubt that we will encounter Spenser or Susan as a grandparent. They are ageless and I would prefer to keep them so. Although if I become a grandparent (despite my obvious youth), I may change my mind.

Sixkill

“You know about Jumbo Nelson?”

“The actor,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Here shooting a movie,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You guys think he murdered a young woman,” I said.

“He’s a person of interest,” Quirk said.

I looked at him. I’d known him a long time.

“And?” I said.

“Lemme fill you in,” Quirk said.

I got up and poured myself more coffee, and warmed Quirk’s up. Then I put the pot on the burner, sat down in my chair, and leaned back with my feet up.

“Do,” I said.

“Real name’s Jeremy Franklin Nelson,” Quirk said. “Ever seen him?”

“Seen his photograph,” I said. “Never seen a movie.”

“Photo’s enough,” Quirk said. “You can see where the nickname came from.”

“I can,” I said.

“He’s in town,” Quirk said, “shooting a movie. Which you know.”

“As yet untitled,” I said.

“Frazz tell you that?” Quirk said.

“I’m adventurous,” I said. “Sometimes I read other stuff.”

“F-- media’s treating this like it was the Lindbergh kidnapping.”

“Lotta media to fill,” I said.

“Too much,” Quirk said. “Always was. Anyway, Jumbo is in town, travels with a bodyguard, an Indian.”

“A Native American?”

Quirk nodded.

“Like I said.”

“Could be an India Indian,” I said.

“This guy’s American Indian,” Quirk said. “Wait’ll you get a load of him.”

“Dangerous?” I said.

“I dunno,” Quirk said. “Looks good.”

“Bodyguard involved?” I said.

“In the crime? Not that I know of,” Quirk said.

“Press tells me that Jumbo raped and murdered a young woman and should be beheaded at once.”

“Yeah,” Quirk said. “That’s what they tell me, too. What everybody tells me.”

“You have doubts?”

Quirk shrugged.

“Here’s what I know,” he said. “Girl’s name is Dawn Lopata, twenty years old, graduated last year from Bunker Hill Community College, was not employed.”

Quirk sipped some coffee.

“More sugar,” he said.

He went to the coffeemaker on the file cabinet and got some, and stirred it in, and sat back down. He took another sip and nodded.

“She’s watching them shoot a scene outdoors on the Common, near Park Street Station, and Jumbo spots her. He sends a production assistant over to invite her to have lunch with him in the commissary. She’s thrilled.”

“As I would be,” I said.

“Yeah,” Quirk said. “Me too. So she has lunch with all the stars and the movie crew, and Jumbo gets her phone number and says maybe they can get together later, and she says oh-wow-yes.”

“Do you know she said that?”

“The oh-wow-yes?” Quirk said. “No. So he calls her that night and she goes over to his hotel. They drink some champagne. They do some lines. They have sex. When they get through, they get dressed. Jumbo excuses himself for a moment while he goes to the bathroom. And while he’s gone she lies back down on the bed and dies.”

“I was having sex with Jumbo Nelson,” I said, “I might consider it myself.”

“It was after,” Quirk said.

“Maybe she died of shame,” I said.

Enter Spenser

The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse. It was paneled in big squares of dark walnut, with ornately figured maroon drapes at the long windows.
There was maroon carpeting and the furniture was black leather with brass studs. The office was much nicer than the classrooms; maybe I should have worn a tie.
Bradford W. Forbes, the president, was prosperously heavy—reddish face; thick, longish, white hair; heavy white eyebrows. He was wearing a brown pin- striped custom- tailored three- piece suit with a gold Phi Beta Kappa key on a gold watch chain stretched across his successful middle. His shirt was yellow broadcloth and his blue and yellow striped red tie spilled out over the top of his vest.
As he talked, Forbes swiveled his chair around and stared at his reflection in the window. Flakes of the season’s first snow flattened out against it, dissolved and trickled down onto the white brick sill. It was very gray out, a November grayness that is peculiar to Boston in late fall, and Forbes’s office seemed cheerier than it should have because of that.
He was telling me about the sensitive nature of a college president’s job, and there was apparently a lot to say about it. I’d been there twenty minutes and my eyes were beginning to cross. I wondered if I should tell him his office looked like a whorehouse. I decided not to.
“Do you see my position, Mr. Spenser,” he said, and swiveled back toward me, leaning forward and putting both his hands palms down on the top of his desk. His nails were manicured.
“Yes, sir,” I said. “We detectives know how to read people.”
Forbes frowned and went on.
“It is a matter of the utmost delicacy, Mr. Spenser”— he was looking at himself in the glass again—“requiring restraint, sensitivity, circumspection, and a high degree of professionalism. I don’t know the kind of people who usually employ you, but . . .”
I interrupted him.
“Look, Dr. Forbes, I went to college once, I don’t wear my hat indoors. And if a clue comes along and bites me on the ankle, I grab it. I am not, however, an Oxford don. I am a private detective. Is there something you’d like me to detect, or are you just polishing up your elocution for next year’s commencement?”
Forbes inhaled deeply and let the air out slowly through his nose.
“District Attorney Frale told us you were somewhat overfond of your own wit. Tell him, Mr. Tower.”
Tower stepped away from the wall where he had been leaning and opened a manila file folder. He was tall and thin, with a Prince Valiant haircut, long sideburns, buckle boots, and a tan gabardine suit. He put one foot on a straight chair and flipped open the folder, no nonsense.
“Carl Tower,” he said, “head of campus security. Four days ago a valuable fourteenth- century illuminated manuscript was stolen from our library.”
“What is an illuminated manuscript?”
Forbes answered, “A handwritten book, done by monks usually, with illustrations in color, often red and gold in the margins. This particular one is in Latin, and contains an allusion to Richard Rolle, the fourteenth-century English mystic. It was discovered forty years ago behind an ornamental façade at Godwulf Abbey, where it is thought to have been secreted during the pillage of the monasteries that followed Henry the Eighth’s break with Rome.”
“Oh,” I said, “that illuminated manuscript.”