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Spenser is hired to protect a lesbian, feminist activist, the eponymous Rachel Wallace. Spenser defends her more vigorously than she would like and she fires him. Shortly afterwards, she is kidnapped and the police have almost nothing to go on. Though no longer officially employed to protect her, Spenser feels duty-bound to find her because he could have protected her if he had followed her orders and held onto the job. His investigation leads him...

Ellis Alves is no angel. But his lawyer says he was framed for the murder of college student Melissa Henderson and asks Spenser for help. From Boston's back streets to Manhattan's elite, Spenser and Hawk search for suspects, including Melissa's rich-kid, tennis star boyfriend. But when a man with a .22 puts Spenser in a coma, the hope for justice may die with him.

PI Spenser of Boston investigates a stalking, the victim of which is a theatre company director, a probe that leaves him cold until an actor is gunned down. At that he swings into action, clashing with the Chinese Mafia and narrowly missing being killed himself.

Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years she's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they've all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower--and now he's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower "cease and desist," so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, Spenser's assignment...

When the body of a divorced Florida heiress washes ashore in Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone learns of the woman's past appearances in an erotic video and finds it suspicious that the victim's family seems unaffected by her death.

When two people are shot outside of a housing project, Spenser and Hawk must battle street gangs and lethal drug dealers in order to track the killer.

Private investigator Spenser leaves Boston for summertime Cape Cod where he and his friend Susan Silverman find themselves involved with fools and villains whose concerns are extortion, robbery, and murder.

"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...

Boston private investigator Spenser heads west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires, where he has been hired to investigate a murder in which the suspects are a local gang of misfits, desert rats, drunks, and thieves led by a charismatic individual known only as The Preacher.

Spenser investigates the kidnapping of fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett. His only lead, a vicious bodybuilder, isn't talking except with his knuckles, but with a boy's life on the line, Spenser can speak that brutal language too.