Robert B. Parker's Kickback

Maybe he shouldn t have gone out and celebrated. Maybe he should have stuck around for the vanilla ice cream after the lasagna victory meal. But what-ifs and should-haves didn t cut it the next morning as the gray dawn crept up at five a.m. over a row of clapboard houses with peeling blue and green paint. You could smell the Merrimack River rolling by.

The cops were there. They were talking to the old man with the gun.

The boy stood in the open, his pal Tim already in a squad car. Tim s old man s Coupe de Ville getting hooked up to a tow truck with spinning lights. His parents were going to freak.

Another cop was talking to the boy now, wanting to know how much they had to drink.

I don t know, he said. A beer. Maybe two.

That s illegal, the cop said. You re only seventeen.

Yeah, he said, not caring for a lecture, knowing he was screwed. No shit.

The cop just shook his head. He was young, maybe five years older than the boy. The cop stood ramrod straight, had hair clipped close like he d been in the military. He wrote down some notes, wanting to know the boy s parents phone number.

It s just my dad, he said. I live with my dad.

Is your mom alive?

Yeah, he said. But I don t talk to her. Listen, this is a big mistake. We weren t doing nothing. We were just fooling around and that crazy old guy comes busting out the garage door waving his pistol and saying he was going to blow our brains out.

Why were you in his garage?

We were lost, the kid said. We ran out of gas.

Is the car stolen?

No, it s not stolen, the kid said. It belongs to my friend. It was his grandfather s and then his father s. He rebuilt the engine. Now it s his. Kind of.

What do you mean kind of his? the cop said.

It s his, the kid said. His old man lets him use it when he wants. He s gonna get the title on the Caddy when we

Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring police chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010.
 
Ace Atkins is the New York Times bestselling author of the Quinn Colson novels, the first two of which The Ranger and The Lost Ones were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel (he also has a third Edgar nomination for his short story, Last Fair Deal Gone Down ). In addition, he is the author of several New York Times bestselling novels in the continuation of Robert B. Parker s Spenser series. Before turning to fiction, he was a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune, and, in college, played defensive end for the undefeated Auburn University football team (for which he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated). He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Praise for Robert B. Parker s Kickback

It s great to see Spenser tackle a social evil with its roots in real life. Kirkus Reviews
 
A topical plot line propels bestseller Atkins s engrossing fourth Spenser novel...Once again, Atkins has done a splendid job of capturing the voice of the late Robert B. Parker. Publishers Weekly

Atkins does a wonderful job with the characters created by Parker. To loyalists it may be heresy, but a case can be made for the Atkins novels being better than some of the last Spenser mysteries penned by Parker. A top-notch thriller. Booklist
 
Classic Spenser the Spenser of wry wit, tasty food and drinks, hard workouts and lethal confrontations...Once again, Atkins has delivered a thriller that evokes the best of Parker s Spenser series, not least the punchy back-and-forth of the dialogue. Associated Press

Written in impeccable style by Ace Atkins...Robert B. Parker is smiling down on this brilliant Spenser adventure. It's full of everything we've come to expect from the Boston Private Investigator action, smart-mouthed sarcasm, the assistance of Hawk and most of all, justice. Suspense Magazine

Praise for Ace Atkins and the Spenser Series

Handpicked by the Parker estate to be the keeper of the flame for the Spenser franchise, award-winning author Ace Atkins rises flawlessly to the occasion. In addition to the signature dialogue, all the familiars are fully resurrected: Susan, the sexy shrink; Pearl, the wonder dog; Hawk, the wonder sidekick; good cop Quirk, and, of course, Spenser himself, that consummate knight errant for the twenty-first century. Kirkus Reviews

It s a feat when a writer creates characters who live and breathe on the page and make readers care and keep coming back for more. To manage that with someone else s characters, let alone with an icon like Spenser, is a minor miracle. Ace Atkins pulls it off. Chicago Sun-Times