Silent Night

A Spenser Holiday Novel

By: Robert B. Parker, Helen Brann

Narrated by: Joe Mantegna

It’s December in Boston, and Spenser is busy planning the menu for Christmas dinner when he’s confronted in his office by a young boy named Slide. Homeless and alone, Slide has found refuge with an organization named Street Business, which gives shelter and seeks job opportunities for the homeless and lost. Slide’s mentor, Jackie Alvarez, is being threatened, and Street Business is in danger of losing its tenuous foothold in the community, turning Slide and many others like him back on the street. But it’s not a simple case of intimidation – Spenser, aided by Hawk, finds a trail that leads to a dangerous drug kingpin, whose hold on the at-risk community Street Business serves threatens not just the boys’ safety and security, but their lives as well.

Unfinished at the time of his death, Silent Night was completed by Parker’s longtime agent, whose decades-long association with Parker’s work gives her unique insight and perspective to his voice and storytelling style. Her contribution also speaks volumes about their enduring friendship.

Critic reviews

Praise for SILENT NIGHT

“This is the perfect holiday treat for crime readers needing another Spenser fix”
—Library Journal

“Brann does a seamless job…Diehard Parker fans will be delighted.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Robert B. Parker

“Is there a more promising opening in contemporary crime fiction than Boston PI Spenser opening his office door to a new client? Instantly we get Spenser’s clear-eyed view of the client, what his or her dress and stature have to say, and the rat-a-tat-tat of Spenser’s wise-guy answers to the client’s queries…a series of unflagging excellence…Great plotting, clever dialogue, and Spenser’s mouthwatering cooking all make for a fantastic time.”

—Booklist (starred)

Parker’s dialogue, clever to a fault, moves his tales along at a natural, human pace as his characters square off, verbs and nouns used like switchblades.”

—The Chicago Sun Times

“A fast and fun outing…Parker was a true stylist. His strength was in his sparseness and Painted Ladies shows him in fine form.”

—The Boston Globe

“As with all of Parker’s 70 novels, the prose is tight and muscular and the dialogue is superb. A must read for faithful fans of the series.”

— Associated Press

“In Spenser’s end is his beginning....Spenser can still nail a person’s foibles on first meeting, still whip up a gourmet meal in a few minutes, still dispatch the thugs who haunt his office and his home, and do it all while maintaining a fierce love of Susan Silverman and English poetry....Long live Spenser.”

— Booklist

Silent Night

I found this Robert B Parker book an excellent audible book, with very good narration.

A fitting goodbye

This episode of the Spenser chronicles is in the long tradition of serial novelists who write a Christmas story. However grimy the stories may be, they tend to have a gentler ending, and to show the protagonists at their ethical best, and that is the case here. Parker (and Brann) pulled out all the stops to show Spenser, Hawk, and even Vinnie as human beings with complicated lives and feelings, and with sometimes inexplicable decency.
But what we are reading, we all know now, is Parker's last word about these people he created. After Parker's death, his series were sold to other authors, and while sometimes the new writers produce credible plots with familiar characters, they cannot write authentically, cannot produce in the reader that same satisfaction, because Parker's characters came from his heart and his mind and his experience and his fantasies, and no one else's.
So, if we have to say goodbye to Parker, let it be with this lovely novel, filled with the people we know making bad things come out right. It is a story of hope in a season of hope. And it's OK to be thankful for it.

Great Spencer in the Parker style

I have always loved Robert Parkers Spencer detective series. I listen to many of these as audiobooks narrated by Joe Mantegna in the 90s. This book follows in that wonderful tradition. It’s a good story, not too sentimental, and with all the hallmarks of a traditional Spencer story. Joe Mantegna is wonderful as narrator.

A good read but not all Robert Parker

This author has the general idea of Spencer and Hawk but does not quite have all of Robert Parker's the net. The characters are not as holistic and deep as Parkers.

AWESOME BOOK! WELL WRITTEN!!

I am so Sorry Robert passed. However- Joan did an EXCELLENT job finishing this book!