I heard the news via a blog post by Ward Pond that one of my favorite authors had died at age 77. Parker wrote a lot of stuff, but by far my favorite were the ones featuring Spenser, the tough smart, and intellectual detective from Boston. The books led to the TV series Spenser for Hire with Robert Urich (not bad), some made for TV movies, and some more TV movies with Joe Mantegna.

Spenser has been one of my favorite characters, perhaps second only to Travis McGee, and no doubt for the strength of character that he played. Lots of interesting lessons taught across those 39 novels, among them that there is a lot of gray in life and that sometimes even the best solution possible doesn’t look very pretty.

The news reported that he died as his desk, and I have to think that was a good ending to his story.