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Spenser's Boston
Who better to tour us through such Bostonian sites as the Ritz Bar and Beacon Hill than author Parker, creator of Beantown's most famous private-eye, Spenser? 5 1/2" x 7 1/2". Color photos.
- GenresNonfictionMystery
200 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1994
About the author
Robert B. Parker
493 books2,354 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database named Robert B. Parker.
Robert Brown Parker was an American writer, primarily of fiction within the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies was also produced based on the character. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited as reviving and changing the detective genre by critics and bestselling authors including Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane.
Parker also wrote nine novels featuring the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town; six novels with the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator; and four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The first was Appaloosa, made into a film starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.
Robert Brown Parker was an American writer, primarily of fiction within the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies was also produced based on the character. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited as reviving and changing the detective genre by critics and bestselling authors including Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane.
Parker also wrote nine novels featuring the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town; six novels with the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator; and four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The first was Appaloosa, made into a film starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 20, 2015
pictures of Boston as one of my fav detective character's sees Boston. excellent photos!
January 9, 2021
I finally got my hands on this book! Robert B. Parker is one of my all-time favorite authors. I have missed him since his passing, and it is so great to hear his “voice” again as Spenser. This book is mostly of photographs of Boston by Kasho Kumagai with excerpts of books by Parker. We are also taken on a tour of Spenser’s Boston as he and Susan Silverman guide Rachel Wallace.
July 29, 2011
BOTTOM LINE: Nice little book filled with beautiful pictures of Boston, accompanied by short bits from Robert Parker's "Spenser" books - a classy production, first published in Japan five years previously.
Includes many black and white, and a goodly amount of glorious color photos of Boston, mixed with the prose, including a nice long article by Robert B. Parker, almost a short story, but not a mystery - tells of an afternoon's trek through Boston with Spenser, Susan Silverman, and the visiting Rachel Wallace, touching upon many of Spenser's (and Parker's) favorite haunts. As a native Bostonian and long-time Spenser fan I'm an easy sell for this puff piece, and found it to be very good to look at, thoughtfully arranged and presented, and not so long you become bored. Some of the pictures are simply stunning. A nice little treat for Spenser fans.
Includes many black and white, and a goodly amount of glorious color photos of Boston, mixed with the prose, including a nice long article by Robert B. Parker, almost a short story, but not a mystery - tells of an afternoon's trek through Boston with Spenser, Susan Silverman, and the visiting Rachel Wallace, touching upon many of Spenser's (and Parker's) favorite haunts. As a native Bostonian and long-time Spenser fan I'm an easy sell for this puff piece, and found it to be very good to look at, thoughtfully arranged and presented, and not so long you become bored. Some of the pictures are simply stunning. A nice little treat for Spenser fans.
May 30, 2026
Read this knowing I am not reviewing the book, but rather leaving notes and asides to remind me of my readings year to year. Much has been lost in terms of childhood on, but perhaps today’s children can use the tools now available and be more vigorous in their record keeping.
This book is overall disappointing. Published in 1994, with a now much changed Boston from Spenser's streets, you cannot help but think about what this book could have been. A lot of time reading (or re-reading) Parker's books, taking a lot of notes of locales and businesses and addresses where the primary players lived and worked and worked out. Henry's Gym. The outlying places Spenser went to: small towns, Cape Cod, nearby States. I wouldn't have even called it Spenser's Boston but rather "Spenser's World."
The book is only about the size of a small trade paperback, far smaller than one might expect of what is essentially a photo pictorial. Then, the artsy and pretentious photography fails to deliver on the promise of the book: to provide the many Spenser fans who, like me, want to see the familiar haunts (even if some are fictious,) and the other locations described in his adventures. Some of the photos are so murky, underexposed, small and poorly printed that they are nearly unidentifiable. Absurdly, many places are represented by meaningless close-ups: Beacon Hill is depicted by close-up shots of a door knocker, folded newspapers tucked in a stair railing, and the front portion of a Jeep. JJ Donovan's Tavern is represented by an extreme close-up of a beer bottle label, and so on. Locke-Ober, the old Locke-Ober, long gone now and a favorite haunt for Spenser, Parker and George V. Higgins (a truly masterful crime novelist.) They could have shot the brownstone on Marlborough Street where Spenser allegedly lived, his favorite donut shop (still in existence,) the Harvest restaurant where Spenser would take Susan so she could nibble on an olive (I hated her eating disorder. Parker praised it for giving her a killer bod.)
What were the editors thinking? Why didn't Robert Parker have greater artistic control over his own creation? Why didn't they demand more of the photographer? They could have had an addendum at the end--maybe shots of Parker's dog, his work desk, his favorite framed posters and the leather chair his wife loathed. There are some quotes from the books interspersed with the bad photographs. As someone who has read and re-read everything Parker ever wrote, it was very disappointing.
It wouldn't be worth doing now that Parker is gone. I'm not even sure anyone other than die hard fans seek out what's newly published these days. As good as his ghost writers are, there is that certain spark that only Robert Parker could produce.
Equally disappointing....my own bete noire, the fact he has has other authors continued his character series (Spenser, Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, the Westerns) and most of them very talented men indeed, but you can't help but think he chose this route to keep his wife (who loved being a philanthropist), or his two sons (dancers past tense and choreographers maybe past tense) living in Manhattan) living the lifestyle to which "they had become accustomed." Elmore Leonard, in a bitter second divorce said that his future ex-wife needed his money to live the lifestyle she felt she was "entitled to." And so it goes, to steal from Kurt Vonnegut.
I consider myself a huge Robert Parker fan, even though I felt the last few decades of his life he phoned it in--the wide margins, the short chapters, turning your characters into caricatures. Go back and read his earliest work and you may see what I mean. Start with The Godwulf Manuscripts.
As an afterthought to my grumbling, I'm giving you a list of what Spenser ate (and sometimes where) during the course of ONE book. THAT is what I mean by research:
Food
Chapter 1: Lobster Savanna at Lock-Obers'.
Chapter 4: Cream of carrot soup and Veal Giorgio at Rosalie's.
Chapter 8: Batter-fried shrimp with mustard fruits at the Harvest.
Chapter 12: A meal he didn't have: he passes on the Scrambled Hamburg Oriental.
Chapter 14: Oysters at the Raw bar in Quincy market and a skewer of fresh fruit and melon.
Chapter 15: Coffee and donuts in his office.
Chapter 17: Tuna on whole wheat and a Winesap apple from a small stand on St. James Avenue.
Chapter 19: Peking Ravioli and Mushu pork across from the Public Library.
Caponata and syrian bread at Susan's house, followed by steak, mushroom, peppers, and onions along with rice pilaf.
Chapter 20: Lamb chops and black bread at home.
Chapter 23: Meatloaf sandwich with lettuce for supper at home.
Cornbread, country sausage, and broiled tomato for breakfast.
Chapter 24: Lunch in the car: fresh syrian bead, a pound of feta cheese, a pound of calamata olives.
Chapter 25: Spaghetti with a sauce of broccoli, garlic, basil, parsley, kosher salt, and oil. Served with the rest of the syrian bread from lunch.
Chapter 26: Cornbread made with buttermilk and wild-strawberry jam.
Whole wheat toast at the Parker House.
Chapter 27: Ham sandwiches.The ham is from Millerton in New York state. "Cured with salt and molasses. Hickory-smoked, no nitrates."
Chapter 31: Red beans and rice, chopped peppers and scallions, with canned chopped tomatoes on top, served with grated cheddar cheese.
This book is overall disappointing. Published in 1994, with a now much changed Boston from Spenser's streets, you cannot help but think about what this book could have been. A lot of time reading (or re-reading) Parker's books, taking a lot of notes of locales and businesses and addresses where the primary players lived and worked and worked out. Henry's Gym. The outlying places Spenser went to: small towns, Cape Cod, nearby States. I wouldn't have even called it Spenser's Boston but rather "Spenser's World."
The book is only about the size of a small trade paperback, far smaller than one might expect of what is essentially a photo pictorial. Then, the artsy and pretentious photography fails to deliver on the promise of the book: to provide the many Spenser fans who, like me, want to see the familiar haunts (even if some are fictious,) and the other locations described in his adventures. Some of the photos are so murky, underexposed, small and poorly printed that they are nearly unidentifiable. Absurdly, many places are represented by meaningless close-ups: Beacon Hill is depicted by close-up shots of a door knocker, folded newspapers tucked in a stair railing, and the front portion of a Jeep. JJ Donovan's Tavern is represented by an extreme close-up of a beer bottle label, and so on. Locke-Ober, the old Locke-Ober, long gone now and a favorite haunt for Spenser, Parker and George V. Higgins (a truly masterful crime novelist.) They could have shot the brownstone on Marlborough Street where Spenser allegedly lived, his favorite donut shop (still in existence,) the Harvest restaurant where Spenser would take Susan so she could nibble on an olive (I hated her eating disorder. Parker praised it for giving her a killer bod.)
What were the editors thinking? Why didn't Robert Parker have greater artistic control over his own creation? Why didn't they demand more of the photographer? They could have had an addendum at the end--maybe shots of Parker's dog, his work desk, his favorite framed posters and the leather chair his wife loathed. There are some quotes from the books interspersed with the bad photographs. As someone who has read and re-read everything Parker ever wrote, it was very disappointing.
It wouldn't be worth doing now that Parker is gone. I'm not even sure anyone other than die hard fans seek out what's newly published these days. As good as his ghost writers are, there is that certain spark that only Robert Parker could produce.
Equally disappointing....my own bete noire, the fact he has has other authors continued his character series (Spenser, Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, the Westerns) and most of them very talented men indeed, but you can't help but think he chose this route to keep his wife (who loved being a philanthropist), or his two sons (dancers past tense and choreographers maybe past tense) living in Manhattan) living the lifestyle to which "they had become accustomed." Elmore Leonard, in a bitter second divorce said that his future ex-wife needed his money to live the lifestyle she felt she was "entitled to." And so it goes, to steal from Kurt Vonnegut.
I consider myself a huge Robert Parker fan, even though I felt the last few decades of his life he phoned it in--the wide margins, the short chapters, turning your characters into caricatures. Go back and read his earliest work and you may see what I mean. Start with The Godwulf Manuscripts.
As an afterthought to my grumbling, I'm giving you a list of what Spenser ate (and sometimes where) during the course of ONE book. THAT is what I mean by research:
Food
Chapter 1: Lobster Savanna at Lock-Obers'.
Chapter 4: Cream of carrot soup and Veal Giorgio at Rosalie's.
Chapter 8: Batter-fried shrimp with mustard fruits at the Harvest.
Chapter 12: A meal he didn't have: he passes on the Scrambled Hamburg Oriental.
Chapter 14: Oysters at the Raw bar in Quincy market and a skewer of fresh fruit and melon.
Chapter 15: Coffee and donuts in his office.
Chapter 17: Tuna on whole wheat and a Winesap apple from a small stand on St. James Avenue.
Chapter 19: Peking Ravioli and Mushu pork across from the Public Library.
Caponata and syrian bread at Susan's house, followed by steak, mushroom, peppers, and onions along with rice pilaf.
Chapter 20: Lamb chops and black bread at home.
Chapter 23: Meatloaf sandwich with lettuce for supper at home.
Cornbread, country sausage, and broiled tomato for breakfast.
Chapter 24: Lunch in the car: fresh syrian bead, a pound of feta cheese, a pound of calamata olives.
Chapter 25: Spaghetti with a sauce of broccoli, garlic, basil, parsley, kosher salt, and oil. Served with the rest of the syrian bread from lunch.
Chapter 26: Cornbread made with buttermilk and wild-strawberry jam.
Whole wheat toast at the Parker House.
Chapter 27: Ham sandwiches.The ham is from Millerton in New York state. "Cured with salt and molasses. Hickory-smoked, no nitrates."
Chapter 31: Red beans and rice, chopped peppers and scallions, with canned chopped tomatoes on top, served with grated cheddar cheese.
September 27, 2008
The photos were awesome. It was mainly photos but if you have been to Boston you will appreciate this book.
184 pages and very little writing.
184 pages and very little writing.
December 11, 2021
I'm a big Spenser fan. I've wanted to read this for a long time. There are many photos of Boston. Spenser and Susan take Rachel Wallace on a walk through interesting parts of the city. Their walk would be a good template for you the next time you visit.
July 5, 2013
I liked Parker's little contribution, he walks a few characters through a tour of the city in 1994 or so.
March 12, 2016
917.4461 Photographs of Boston and it's surroundings by Kasho Kumagai, with a short essay by Robert B. Parker. Photos are interspersed with quotes from the Spenser novels.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews