Spenser investigates a case that hits dangerously close to home in this latest installment of Robert B. Parker’s beloved series. Spenser is waiting out the latest Boston snowstorm when he gets word that Rita Fiore has been shot. Rita’s always been a tricky one: flirting with Spenser for years, she’s an ever-present figure that transcends friendship in Spenser’s circle. But at the end of the day, Rita is family. And family will always be protected. Both a pit bull in the courtroom and provocateur outside it, Rita is no stranger to controversy. But as one of the city’s toughest lawyers, Spenser knows that there’s no short list of suspects who might want to enact revenge. With Rita’s life hanging in the balance, it’s up to him to get to the bottom of things, even if it means unearthing some unsavory secrets that might just lead him into an age-old game of lies and deceit. "Author Mike Lupica keeps alive Spenser For Hire with the latest caper for the investigator first created by Robert B. Parker. Face it, if a character is memorable enough (Robin Hood, Sherlock Holmes, Spenser), someone is going to keep the stories coming. Just be glad Lupica is the one in charge here." — Parade "[W]hen Mike Lupica took over Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, it was a seamless transition. It’s as if he channels Parker from beyond the grave: setting, prose, dialogue—the works . . . Hot Property is a must for longtime Spenser fans and a terrific entry point for newcomers as well." — BookPage "Spenser’s back with a vengeance in Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property , a thrilling story filled with suspense, violence, corruption and witty one-liners. Mike Lupica delivers a new Spenser tale with a classic feel containing heart, virtue and an abundance of Hawk. Everything a long-time fan of this series could ever want." — Best Thriller Books Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Police Chief Jesse Stone, the acclaimed Virgil Cole-Everett Hitch Westerns, and the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010. Mike Lupica is a Hall of Fame sports columnist and New York Times bestselling author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction, in addition to being a frequent co-writer with James Patterson. A longtime friend to Robert B. Parker, he was selected by the Parker estate to continue the Spenser series, after having previously done the same with the Sunny Randall series, and with Jesse Stone. One It was early February and snowing again in Boston. I felt as if it had been snowing since Thanksgiving. Or perhaps since the autumn equinox. The TV meteorologists, talking excitedly every night about more record snowfall numbers, and about ten more inches than we'd gotten ten years ago, continued to treat the whole thing like porn. Hawk, being Hawk, had his own analysis of the city's current weather conditions, void of any statistics about dew points and barometric pressure. "Climate change," he said, "has now officially worn my ass out." "It took a winter like this to get you there?" I said. "Been building up to it for a while," he said. "Feeling like I'm living at the damn North Pole finally took me over the edge." I stared out my window at the latest storm, the snow blowing sideways across Boylston Street. The morning news shows had already announced another round of school closings. People were being advised to stay off the Pike and the expressway and take public transportation if possible. They were also telling nonessential workers to stay home. I imagined people all over the greater Boston area declaring themselves more essential than the pilot landing a plane at Logan. I remembered a Carl Sandburg line about fog being on silent haunches over the harbor and the city before moving on. Maybe fog. The snow in Boston wouldn't move on, from the Harbor or anywhere else. They said there hadn't been snowfall like this in ten years in Boston. It had reached the point where just going for donuts had started to feel as if it ought to be one of those cross-country events in the Winter Olympics. I made myself a second cup of my own coffee and continued reading The Globe at my desk. Despite the weather, they were still delivering the paper to my door most mornings, if a couple hours late sometimes. I knew I could just as easily read it online, that it was a generational thing to refuse to do so. But it was a personal choice, as was continuing to use a landline. "I'm actually surprised that phone on your desk isn't a rotary," Susan Silverman once told me. "Don't think I didn't consider that," I said. "You can get them for thirty-nine ninety-nine on Amazon. I checked." "T-Mobile will never take you alive," she said. "By the way," I said. "You know what never lost messages and texts like my iPhone One Thousand does? My