Spenser is back again — as tough and resilient as he was in pursuit of the Godwulf Manuscript. This time the stakes are higher; he is searching for more than a manuscript. Fifteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett has disappeared from his home in the pleasant, affluent Boston suburb of Smithfield. His parents are convinced that he has been kidnaped. Spenser is not so sure.Pressed between the frantic parents demanding action and the irate police chief warning him to keep off the grass, Spenser goes his independent way. The note demanding ransom and the telephone message that follows it confirm his conviction that all is not what it seems. By biding his time and tracking down some rather eerie clues, he solves the mystery, but not before there has been death and a fight with Goliath.Through all these complications, Spenser must battle the Smithfield police as well as the criminals and fend off the amorous advances of the alcoholic Mrs. Bartlett. But the case offers certain compensations — notably, Susan, beautiful, intelligent, and as discriminating a gourmet as Spenser himself.

A reporter who was prying into the cocaine trade in the central Massachusetts town of Wheaton has been murdered, and Spenser is called in to investigate. When he’s rebuffed by the police and threatened by a Colombian produce dealer who may be the cocaine kingpin, it’s apparent that Wheaton isn’t just another small town, but a major center for the cocaine trade in the Northeast.As Spenser digs deeper for evidence, he meets three women on whom the case seems to turn: Emmy Esteva, the wife of the reputed cocaine kingpin; Juanita Olmos, a young woman who’d been involved with the murdered reporter; and Caroline Rogers, the wife of the Wheaton Police Chief.After another murder is committed and an attempt is made on Spenser’s life, he turns for help to Hawk, whose special skills keep them all alive, and to Susan, whose psychological insights are more and more necessary as the chase moves away from cocaine and appears to hinge more on older and more basic problems — jealousy, passion, and hate.Pale Kings and Princes, the fourteenth Spenser novel, takes us into the cutthroat, multibillion-dollar cocaine business, where drugs are valued above all and human life is frighteningly dispensable.