Robert Brown Parker was born in 1932 in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he met Joan, his future wife, when they were children. They began dating while both attended Colby College and were married in 1956. They have two sons, David and Daniel.
Parker received his doctorate from Boston University in 1971 with a thesis on the private eyes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. Today, Parker is generally regarded as next in succession after these three literary icons, and as
the great writer of the hard-boiled private-detective novel. He has written, on average, two books a year for more than three decades. In addition to his Spenser series, which served as the basis for the popular television series
Spenser: For Hire in the 1980s, he has written several books about characters Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, two with Philip Marlowe as the protagonist, and such standalone novels as
All Our Yesterdays,
Wilderness, and
Double Play. His fourth novel,
Promised Land, won an Edgar Award as best novel of 1977. Parker was named Grand Master Award in 2002 by the Mystery Writers of America.
