Robert B. Parker - Crimson Joy

PARKERS GOT IT!
A SMASH BEST SELLER!
A GREAT PRIVATE-EYE HERO!
AND PRAISE THAT SWEEPS ACROSS
THE COUNTRY!

[Parkers style is] simple, direct and clear as a mountain stream. Hes straight arrow all the way and a reader can relax and trust him.

Associated Press

A good one!

Daily News (New York)

Parker is back in rare form Spenser [is a] mans man. A womans man. A man who lives by his own very strict code of conduct. Spenser is never afraid to put his heart where his mouth is. But not for long. Read Spenser. And enjoy.

Grand Rapids Press

Suspenseful almost impossible to put down.

Sacramento Union

A novel worth reading with an ending that is worth waiting for.

South Bend Tribune

Parker has perfected a great formula: a small cast of ensemble characters, straightforward plots, clean prose and crackerjack dialogue his mysteries hit all the right buttons.

Seattle Times

Boston private eye Spenser has handled many a tough case, but none as harrowing as the one in Crimson Joy his Red Rose Killer may be the best fictional representation of a psychotic murderer weve had in some time.

Buffalo News

Compelling the race is not to the swift but to the tough. Thats the way Spenser wants it, and at this stage in his career, he gets to make the rules.

Pittsburgh Press

The jewel in this complicated literary setting is the character of Spenser himself. A man who wears a broken nose and a broken heart equally well, he is a constant revelation for even longtime Parker fans.

Milwaukee Sentinel

Parker is as good as we have at writing these loner-PI adventures and Spenser is one of the most refreshing, attractive representatives of the genre. I wouldnt want to miss a single one.

New Smyrna Beach Observer (Fla.)

Dell Books by Robert B. Parker

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
CRIMSON JOY
PALE KINGS AND PRINCES
TAMING A SEA-HORSE
A CATSKILL EAGLE
VALEDICTION
LOVE AND GLORY
THE WIDENING GYRE
CEREMONY
A SAVAGE PLACE
EARLY AUTUMN
LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE
WILDERNESS
THE JUDAS GOAT
PROMISED LAND
MORTAL STAKES
GOD SAVE THE CHILD
THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT

For all of us

Sheridan Street in Jamaica Plain goes uphill from Center Street for about two hundred yards, crests, and heads down toward Chestnut Avenue. Its a narrow street, lined with two- and three-family clapboard houses. Many of the houses had been broken up into apartments and a lot of the apartments were occupied by students and recent graduates. The rest by people who worked without a tie.

On a bright, cold day in early March the last shame of winter lingered in the hard compounded mounds of snow and sand, blackened by exhaust and soot.

Frank Belson jammed his car up onto the ice-cluttered sidewalk and parked, the way cops like to, at an angle, with the rear end of the car sticking halfway out into the street. There were two squad cars already parked the same way.

The house in front of us had a small front porch and two front doors. It had been painted a weak green some time ago. The coroners wagon was in the narrow driveway and yellow scene-of-the-crime tape was strung across the sidewalk on either side of the house. Some neighbors, mostly women with small children, stood around across the street. It was a neighborhood where men worked and women stayed home.

Belson had his badge clipped to his overcoat lapel. The uniformed cop at the door looked at it and nodded and looked at my lapel.

Belson said, Hes okay.

And the cop said, Sure, Sarge, and we walked past him into the house. There was a front hall with stairs leading to a second-floor apartment, and a door to the left, open into the living room of the first-floor apartment. Inside there were several city employees taking pictures and looking around the room. In the middle of the room, with his coat still on and his arms folded across his chest, was Martin Quirk. He was staring down at a corpse.

Belson said, Heres Spenser, Lieutenant.

Quirk nodded without looking at me. He continued to stare down at the corpse. I looked too.

We were staring at a black woman, maybe forty to forty-five. She was naked, her hands and feet had been bound with what looked like clothesline, her mouth had been taped shut, and her opaque brown eyes were blank and still. There was blood between her thighs and the hooked rug beneath her was dark with blood. Between her breasts there was a single red rose.

Another one, I said.

Quirk nodded, still without speaking, staring down at the dead woman. There was no sign of emotion. Belson went and leaned against the doorjamb and peeled the wrapper from a small cheap cigar and put the wrapper in his pocket. He slid the cigar in and out of his mouth, once to moisten it, and then lit it with a kitchen match that he struck with his thumbnail. When he had the cigar glowing he blew out the match and put that in his pocket too. The rest of the cops did what theyd come there to do. No one asked what I was doing there. No one asked Quirk what he was looking at. The room was thick with silence.

Quirk jerked his head at me, said Frank, and walked out of the room. I followed, and Belson swung off the doorjamb and in behind me as we went out of the house and down the steps to Belsons car. Quirk and I got in the back seat.

Go down the Jamaicaway, Frank, Quirk said. Drive around the pond.

Belson eased down the narrow street, took a couple of lefts, and drove onto the Jamaicaway. Quirk leaned back in the seat beside me, clasped his thick hands behind his head, and looked out the window. He had on a poplin raincoat, unbuttoned, a brown Harris tweed jacket, a blue oxford shirt with a button-down collar, a yellow knit tie. I couldnt see his jacket pocket but I knew that the display handkerchief would match the tie.

The papers are already calling him the Red Rose killer, Quirk said.

Or her, I said.

Him, Quirk said. Thereve been semen traces at each murder scene.

At the scene? I said.

Yeah. Never in the woman. This time on the rug, once on her thigh, once on a couch.

He masturbated, I said.

Probably, Quirk said.

Before or after?

Dont know, Quirk said.

Belson drove inbound on the Jamaicaway, with Jamaica Pond on our left. Opposite the pond, on our right, the big, stately houses were touched by the pale spring sun. The houses were less stately than they used to be, and many of them had been taken over by various institutions: private schools, religious orders, elderly housing; some had been condoed.

It might be a cop, Quirk said.

Jesus Christ, I said.

Quirk turned his head from the window and looked at me. And nodded.

He wrote me a letter, Quirk said. He took an envelope out of his inside coat pocket and held it toward me. It was a plain white envelope, the kind they sell in every drugstore. In typescript, it was addressed to Martin Quirk at Quirks home. There was no return address. I opened it. The paper inside was as nondescript as the envelope. In the same typescript the letter said: