“Crackling dialogue, plenty of action, and expert writing.”— The New York Times Rachel Wallace is a tough young woman with a lot of enemies.  Spenser is a tough guy with a macho code of honor, hired to protect a woman who thinks that kind of code is obsolete. Privately, they will never see eye to eye. But when Rachel vanishes. Spenser is ready to lay his life on the line—to find Rachel Wallace. “A rare kind of book.”— Chicago Sun-Times Spenser is..."The sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read-about private eye around today...the legitimate heir to the Hammett-Chandler-Macdonald tradition." --"The Cincinnati Post Spenser is..."Tougher, stronger, better educated, and far more amusing than Sam Spade, Phil Marlowe, or Lewis Archer...Spenser gives the connoisseur of that rare combination of good detective fiction and good literature a chance to indulge himself." --"The Boston Globe 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. 1   LOCKE-OBER’S RESTAURANT is on Winter Place, which is an alley off Winter Street just down from the Common. It is Old Boston the way the Custom House tower is Old Boston. The decor is plain. The waiters wear tuxedos. There are private dining rooms. Downstairs is a room which used to be the Men’s Bar until it was liberated one lunchtime by a group of humorless women who got into a shouting match with a priest. Now anybody can go in there and do what they want. They take Master Charge.   I didn’t need Master Charge. I wasn’t paying, John Ticknor was paying. And he didn’t need Master Charge, because he was paying with the company’s money. I ordered lobster Savannah. The company was Hamilton Black Publishing, and they had ten million dollars. Ticknor ordered scrod.   “And two more drinks, please.”   “Very good.” The waiter took our menus and hurried off. He had a hearing aid in each ear.   Ticknor finished his Negroni. “You drink only beer, Mr. Spenser?”   The waiter returned with a draft Heineken for me and another Negroni for Ticknor.   “No. I’ll drink wine sometimes.”   “But no hard liquor?”   “Not often. I don’t like it. I like beer.”   “And you always do what you like.”   “Almost always. Sometimes I can’t.”   He sipped some more Negroni. Sipping didn’t look easy for him.   “What might prevent you?” he said.   “I might have to do something I don’t like in order to get to do something I like a lot.”   Ticknor smiled a little. “Metaphysical,” he said.   I waited. I knew he was trying to size me up. That was okay, I was used to that. People didn’t know anything about hiring someone like me, and they almost always vamped around for a while.   “I like milk, too,” I said. “Sometimes I drink that.”   Ticknor nodded. “Do you carry a gun?” he said.   “Yes.”   The waiter brought our salad.   “How tall are you?”   “Six one and something.”   “How much do you weigh?”   “Two-oh-one and a half, this morning, after running.”   “How far do you run?”   The salad was made with Boston lettuce and was quite fresh.   “I do about five miles a day,” I said. “Every once in a while I’ll do ten to sort of stretch out.”   “How did your nose get broken?”   “I fought Joe Walcott once when he was past his prime.”   “And he broke your nose?”   “If he’d been in his prime, he’d have killed me,” I said.   “You were a fighter then.”   I nodded. Ticknor was washing down a bite of salad with the rest of his Negroni.   “And you’ve been on the police?”   I nodded.   “And you were dismissed?”   “Yeah.”   “Why?”   “They said I was intractable.”   “Were they right?”   “Yeah.”   The waiter brought our entrée.   “I am told that you are quite tough.”   “You betcha,” I said. “I was debating here today whether to have lobster Savannah or just eat one of the chairs.”   Ticknor smiled again, but not like he wanted me to marry his sister.   “I was also told that you were—I believe the phrase was, and I’m quoting—‘a smart-mouthed bastard’—though it was not said without affection.”   I said, “Whew.”   Ticknor ate a couple of green peas from the side dish. He was maybe fifty and athletic-looking. Squash probably, tennis. Maybe he rode. He wore rimless glasses, which you don’t see all that often anymore, and had a square-jawed Harvardy face, and an unkempt gray crew cut like Archibald Cox. Not a patsy even with the Bryn Mawr accent Not soft.   “Were you thinking of commissioning a biography of me, or do you want to hire me to break someone’s arm?”   “I know some book reviewers,” he said, “but … no, neither of those.” He ate five more peas. “Do you know very much about Rachel Wallace?”   “Sisterhood,