Robert Brown Parker is an American fiction writer of mysteries. He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and earned his BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. He went on to earn his master's degree in English literature from Boston University. He started his career working in advertising. After some years, he went back to school to earn his PhD in English from Boston University in 1971. He then began his writng career while teaching at Northeastern University. He decided to become a full-time writer in 1979. His most popular works were the 40 novels written about the private detective Spenser. The ABC Television Network developed the television series "Spenser: For Hire", based on the character in the mid-1980s. Parker also wrote nine novels based on the character Jesse Stone and six novels based on the character Sunny Randall. On January 18, 2010, Robert Parker died suddenly of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge Massachusetts. (Bowker Author Biography)