A hotshot reporter is dead. He'd gone to take a look-see at “Miami North”—little Wheaton, Massachusetts—the biggest cocaine distribution center above the Mason-Dixon line. Did the kid die for getting too close to the truth . . . or to a sweet lady with a jealous husband? Spenser will stop at nothing to find out. “Like Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a man of honor in a dishonorable world. When he says he will do something, it is done. The dialogues zings, and there is plenty of action . . . but it is the moral element that sets them above most detective fiction.” “Crackling dialogue, plenty of action and expert writing . . . Unexpectedly literate—[Spenser is] in many respects the very exemplar of the species.” “They just don’t make private eyes tougher or funnier.” “Parker has a recorder’s ear for dialogue, an agile wit . . . and, strangely enough, a soupçon of compassion hidden under that sardonic, flip exterior.” “A deft storyteller, a master of pace.” “Spenser probably had more to do with changing the private eye from a coffin-chaser to a full-bodied human being than any other detective hero.” “[Spenser is] tough, intelligent, wisecracking, principled, and brave.”