Crimson Joy

Its place in Spenser

Crimson Joy is book 15 in the Spenser series. It follows Pale Kings and Princes. It is followed by Playmates. See the full Spenser reading order.

Spenser is a Boston private investigator -- ex-boxer, Korean War veteran, gourmet cook, wisecracking romantic -- whose one-name toughness (never explained beyond a nod to the Elizabethan poet) masks a code of honor as rigid as any knight's. Robert B. Parker launched the series in 1973 with The Godwulf Manuscript and spent nearly four decades refining a template that became the genre standard: terse, dialogue-driven prose, a hero who talks his way through trouble as often as he fights his way out, and a real…