Henry Cimoli and Spenser have been friends for years, yet the old boxing trainer has never asked the private eye for a favor. Until now. A heavy-handed developer is trying to buy up Henry's condo on Revere Beach and sends thugs to move the process along. Soon Spenser and his apprentice, Zebulon Sixkill, find a trail leading to a mysterious and beautiful woman, a megalomaniacal Las Vegas kingpin, and plans to turn to a chunk of land north of Boston...

Spenser tries to solve a 30-year-old murder as a favor to an old friend. The lack of clues and a missing FBI intelligence report force Spenser to reach out in every direction, testing his resourcefulness and his courage.

Spenser undertakes an intense search for a missing prostitute, and finds himself traveling amidst the sleaze of Times Square where sex is a commodity, and young girls are the currency.

Spenser is hired to clear Mary Smith, the young wife of wealthy Nathan Smith, of her husband's murder. The leads go nowhere, no one knows a thing-- then another young woman turns up dead and Mary's past begins to look sinister.

Spenser takes up a seemingly open and closed cold case at the behest of a street-wise teen-age girl, who believes her mother's murderers went free. As Spenser digs deeper into the mystery, he finds a much more dangerous and complex mystery than he bargained for. When fourteen-year-old Mattie Sullivan asks Spenser to look into her mother's murder, he's not completely convinced by her claim that the police investigation four years ago was botched. Mattie...

Spenser is forced by loyalty into an alien world where violence is a way of life and outsiders enter at a lethal risk. When Spenser's cohort Hawk is hired by the tenants of a gang-plagued Boston housing project known as "Double Duce," he enlists his friend's aid. A Teenage girl and her infant daughtre have been gunned down. Though the act at first appears to be an accidental drive-by shooting, it soon becomes clear that it was premediatated murder.

...

When Spenser is hired to conduct a surveillance job on an unfaithful husband, he discovers a second investigator, hired by the husband to look after his wife, in a case that embroils him with corporate corruption and murder.

When infamous actor Jumbo Nelson is accused of rape and murder, the Boston PD calls on Spenser to make heads or tails of the case. Although the evidence is mounting against Jumbo, Spenser makes a break when he teams up with Jumbo's bodyguard, Zebulon Sixkill, and uncovers some secrets involving the murder victim.