Just last week I posted one of my favorite episodes of the 80s ABC series Spenser: For Hire, and now comes word that the author of the novels, Robert B. Parker, has died at the age of 77.

No details yet, but Parker died at his desk in his Cambridge, MA home. When you're a writer that's probably the way to go.

If you only know Spenser from the TV series that starred Robert Urich (which was great), you should pick up the novels, too. He's been writing them since the 70s and they're quite good, very engaging first person mystery stories set in Boston. He started a new series of book based around the Jesse Stone character (who happens to live my neck of the woods), and while I've never read those novels I have seen the TV movies featuring Tom Selleck as Stone and they are very good. There's a new Jesse Stone novel coming out in May. Not sure if Parker had finished a new Spenser novel or not (his latest is The Professional).

I think it's time for a Spenser: For Hire marathon.

The other day, Les Moonves said that CBS is a network where the good guys win. That's part of the reason for the Tiffany net's success, even if their programming is sometimes deemed too traditional. Well, a great CBS star is coming back to the fold to play a good guy in a movie series that fans embrace. Tom Selleck will returns as Jesse Stone in his sixth TV movie based on the Robert B. Parker character.

The new TV movie is called Jesse Stone: No Remorse. Stone, a small-town cop with a checkered past and a troubled personal life, hits a major roadblock in his career when the town council suspends him. He takes a job for an old friend, going to Boston to investigate a series of murders in Boston.