The Professional

Robert B. Parker (1932–2010) was an American crime novelist best known for creating Spenser, the wisecracking Boston private investigator at the center of 40 novels beginning with The Godwulf Manuscript (1974). He also created the Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall detective series and, starting with Appaloosa, a series of Westerns featuring Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. He served in the US Army in Korea and earned a PhD in English from Boston University, and in 2002 the Mystery Writers of America n...