The Lineup: The World's Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives

ROBERT B. PARKER

Robert Brown Parker was born in 1932 in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he met Joan, his future wife, when they were children. They began dating while both attended Colby College and were married in 1956. They separated in 1982 but reconciled two years later and celebrated their golden anniversary in the autumn of 2006. They have two sons, David and Daniel. Parker received his doctorate from Boston University in 1971 with a thesis on the private eyes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.

Generally regarded as next in succession after the three icons mentioned above, as the great writer of the hard-boiled private-detective novel, Parker has averaged nearly two books a year for more than three decades. In addition to his Spenser series, which served as the basis for the popular television series Spenser: For Hire in the 1980s, he has written several books each about Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, two with Philip Marlowe as the protagonist, and such stand-alone novels as All Our Yesterdays, Wilderness, and Double Play. His fourth novel, Promised Land, won an Edgar^® as best novel of 1977. The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master for lifetime achievement in 2002.