ROBERT B. PARKER'S FRAMED by Mike Lupica

Book design: George Towne

Lupica's upcoming fourth Spenser sequel opens with the news Martin Quirk's decorated police career has been marred, a confidential informant—Gabriella Flores—alleging she and Quirk had an inappropriate sexual relationship.

With this on his plate, Quirk is still hot to take down Luis Romero, one of Boston's most brazen and elusive fentanyl traffickers. Spenser, Rita Fiore, and a handful of Quirk's allies mount a defense against his unknown enemies, the system, and a new level of deception technology.

Only a short time ago, the notion Quirk would tarnish his character or that anyone else could impugn him was too ludicrous to be the premise of an actual Spenser novel. Generative AI changed the game.

Parker published Spenser novels from 1973 to 2011, but stopped aging the characters and keeping up with the times in the late 1980s. The shift let him keep the characters' history and keep writing indefinitely. When he died, his estate asked that his series stay contemporary. Since 2023, emerging tech has been at the heart of every sequel's crime (fuel alternatives, social media, cryptocurrency, AI). While this follows the estate's wish, it moves away from Parker's later style. Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall are more adaptable to the move than Spenser is. To pack Spenser sequels with current references as Lupica does is to to lose some of Parker's character work. Stone and Randall have almost thirty years less of Parker's work to lose.

Meanwhile Quirk is the second longtime supporting character Lupica has imperiled in four Spensers. It's clearly his go-to premise, but the stakes are nonetheless high, the betrayals still surprising and stinging.

Thanks again to Putnam Books for the NetGalley. Robert B. Parker's Framed will be published November 24.

Want to chat further? Join Fans of Robert B. Parker, my public Matrix room.