Looking for Rachel Wallace [Paperback]

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 GlobeRobert B. Parkerwas 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 relÃ)