Halfway through my steak I caught sight of myself in the mirror behind the bar. I looked like someone who ought to eat alone. I didn’t look in the mirror again.Spenser likes to eat well, drink beer, and carve wood on his off-time. But otherwise he’s Spenser for Hire, a wise-acre PI who takes on every case with good humour and brilliant instincts. When Spenser is hired to look into the disappaearance of a medieval manuscript, stolen from a university library, he feels confident it’ll be an easy case. A young university student has been accused of the theft, and Spenser is convinced she’s innocent.It’s not long, however, before he’s plunged into a quagmire of angry professors, bored housewives, heroin traffickers, Satanists and the Boston mob… and murder.The Godwulf Manuscript is the first in Robert B. Parker’s long-running Spenser For Hire series: dark, funny, noir-inspired and utterly unmissable. Inspired by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, The Godwulf Manuscript is not to be missed.’When it comes to detective novels, 90 per cent of us admit he’s an influence, and the rest of us lie about it’ HARLAN COBEN