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According to Publishers Weekly, Prolific novelist Robert B. Parker died on Tuesday, January 19 of a sudden heart attack. He was 77. Parker, who wrote over 60 books, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Parker's next novel, Split Image (Find this book in our catalog) is coming out on February 23, and Penguin currently has no plans to change its initial publication plans for the novel. Another novel, a western called Blue Eyed Devil, is slated for this spring and, according to Parker's editor, Christine Pepe, the house has "a couple" of other books by him in production now.

Robert B. Parker was perhaps best known for his series featuring his rule-bending detective, Spenser. Split Image, his forthcoming book, will be the ninth novel about Paradise, Mass., police chief Jesse Stone. It focuses on Stone's deepening connection with PI Sunny Randall (also the star of her own series). Both Jesse and Sunny are still recovering from failed relationships. According to the PW review (which you may read in full in our catalog), Parker "does a nice job of integrating their separate therapy sessions (in Sunny's case, with Susan Silverman, the significant other of Parker's best-known detective, Spenser) with two criminal investigations. The parents of 18-year-old Cheryl DeMarco ask Sunny for help in getting Cheryl out of a religious cult, while Stone probes the gunshot murder of Petrov Ognowski, a mob soldier whose boss, Reggie Galen, is the next-door neighbor of another gangster." Family ties prove deadly in this mystery novel, which has the added attraction of tying together three of Parkers most popular characters.

Another Jesse Stone novel: Night and Day
Another Sunny Randall novel: Spare Change
A recent Spenser novel: The Professional

Labels: cults, Massachusetts fiction, mob, Mysteries, Private Detectives, Private Investigators Ltd