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.