Mortal Stakes

Its place in Spenser

Mortal Stakes is book 3 in the Spenser series. It follows God Save the Child. It is followed by Promised Land. 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…