TV reporter Candy Sloan has eyes the color of cornflowers and legs that stretch all the way to heaven. She also has somebody threatening to rearrange her lovely face if she keeps on snooping into charges of Hollywood racketeering. Spenser's job is to keep Candy healthy until she breaks the biggest story of her career. But her star witness has just bowed out with three bullets in his chest, two tough guys have doubled up to test Spenser's skill with his fists, and Candy is about to use her own sweet body as live bait in a deadly romantic game--a game that may cost Spenser his life. "The best new private eye in fiction since  Raymond Chandler." -- Dan  Wakefield "As tough as they come and spiked with a  touch of real class." -- Kirkus  Reviews "Tough,  wisecracking, unafraid, lonely, unexpectedly literate--an  many respects the very examplar of the species."  -- The New York Times    "Spenser gives the tribe of hard-boiled  wonders a new vitality and complexity."  -- Chicago Sun-Times Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, novels featuring Chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, Parker died in January 2010. Chapter 1   I was sitting in my office above the bank with my tie loose and my feet up, reading a book called Play of Double Senses: Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Susan Silverman had given it to me, claiming it was my biography. But it wasn’t. It turned out to be about the sixteenth-century English poet who spelled his name like mine. The guy that wrote it had become the president of Yale, and I thought maybe if I read it, I could become Allan Pinkerton.   I was just starting the chapter titled “Pageant, Show, and Verse” when the phone rang. I picked it up and said in as deep a voice as I could, “Allan Pinkerton, here.”   At the other end a voice I remembered said, “Mr. Spenser, please.”   I said in my Pinkerton voice, “One moment, please,” and then in my normal voice, “Hello.”   The voice on the phone said, “Spenser, do you expect to deceive anyone with that nonsense?”   I said, “You want to hear me do Richard Nixon?”   “No, I do not. I haven’t time. Spenser, this is Rachel Wallace. I assume you recall me.”   “Often,” I said.   “Well, I have some work for you.”   “Let me check my schedule,” I said.   She laughed briefly. “Your sense of humor is much too complete for you to be busy.”   “Are you suggesting I offend people?”   “Yes. Myself included, upon occasion.”   “Only upon occasion?”   “Yes.”   “What would you like done?”   “There’s a young woman in California who is in trouble. She needs the kind of help that you are able to offer.”   “Where in California?”   “Los Angeles. She has uncovered what appears to be a large scandal in the motion picture industry and she fears that her life may become endangered.”   “And you’d like me to go out and look after her?”   “Yes.”   “I didn’t do all that well with you.”   “I think you did. I recommended you to this woman.”   “She’s a friend?”   “No, I met her only once. She’s a television reporter and she interviewed me on the last leg of a book tour. I told her about our adventures. Later on she contacted me through my publisher and requested your name.”   “You must have spoken well of me.”   “I told the truth. You are strong and brave and resourceful. I told her that. I told her also that our politics were miles apart.”   “Politics is too abstract for me,” I said. “I don’t have any.”   “Perhaps you don’t. I told her if you were committed, you would never give up and that, politics aside, you were quite intelligent.”   “Intelligent?”   “Yes.”   “I’m reading a book by the president of Yale,” I said.   “Good for you. Will you help the young woman in California?”   “I need more details.”   “She will supply them. I told her I’d call and clear the way, so to speak.”   “When will I hear from her?”   “This afternoon. Shortly after I hang up.”   “What’s her name?”   “Candy Sloan. Will you do it?”   “Probably.”   “Good. Give my love to Susan.”   “Okay.”   “Perhaps next time I’m in Boston, I can buy you lunch.”   “Yes,” I said. “Call me.”   “I shall. Good-bye, Spenser.”   “Good-bye.”   I hung up the phone and stood and stared out the window. It was June. Below, at the corner of Berkley and Boylston, good-looking women in summer dresses crossed at the light. A lot of men wore seersucker jackets. I didn’t. Susan said I wasn’t the type. I asked her what type I was. She said leather vest, no shirt. I think she was kidding. It was June, seventy-two degrees, clear. The murder count in the city was down ten percent from last year, and I was willing to bet that somewhere someone was hugging the bejeepers out of something.   I looke