Spenser is hired to find the runaway wife of a wealthy businessman. Based on a story by Spenser novelist Robert B. Parker.
Spenser is given an old station as a gift from the fire department for a service rendered them. The police department hires to protect a mysterious witness.
A pair of young thrill-killers target Spenser, accidentally shooting a bystander. Susan's ex-husband visits.
Spenser kills a would-be thief in the course of thwarting a robbery. He and Susan take in the man's two children while investigating his past. Susan discovers she's pregnant.
Spenser investigates the apparent suicide of a young nun, and stumbles onto a corrupt landlord.
Spenser is fired from a bodyguard job after his young charge is kidnapped. Spenser suspects the girl he was to protect, arranged the 'kidnapping' to escape her father, a famous conductor, who may have been molesting his daughter.
Spenser is a Private Detective who is hired by a woman to watch her sister and protect her from an old boyfriend. Susan Silverman is Spenser's girlfriend, a research assistant in a psychologist's office. Susan is elated to have been chosen by handsome Dr. Ed Howard from all the other research assistants to accompany him to San Francisco for a psychology conference. Spenser is less elated. Ed Howard enters the picture when Spenser realizes that his client has multiple personalities, she is herself and her sister. Or is she her sister and . . .she's both Diane and Donna, ok? Susan points out that this is Howard's speciality and should be the one to counsel the woman. Spenser is less than elated to bring in the doctor.
Spenser stumbles onto a ring of thieves while investigating a relic stolen from a museum.
The wife of a kidnapped oil tycoon hires Spenser to deliver $1 million in ransom money to a ring of terrorists while police have the drop-off area surrounded.
Spenser investigates a crooked vice cop involved in the mugging of one of Susan's friends.
Marital infidelity and suspected involvement in a gambling ring lead to Lt. Quirk's suspension. Belson is shot during a raid. Spenser works to clear Quirk's name and catch Belson's would-be killer.
Spenser walks into a death trap when a beautiful university scientist who makes so-called 'designer drugs' hires him to track down her gigolo boyfriend and recover $50,000.
Spenser and Hawk blame themselves for failing to protect their respective clients from the clutches of the underworld, and vow to settle the score with a big-time racketeer and his henchmen.
Spenser is dazzled by the beauty and grace of a former Bolshoi ballerina who appeals for his help and tempts him with her love.
Spenser goes undercover at a private high school to investigate heroin use on campus, but discovers something far more serious.
Spenser is retained to locate a missing scientist who'd just discovered a major breakthrough in laser techniques by a deaf newspaper columnist with whom the scientist had been corresponding.
Spenser and Susan look for a Mexican labor organizer who has suspiciously disappeared. ('On the Waterfront' redux.)
While working for a wealthy woman, Spenser is caught up in a deadly murder mystery complete with an illicit love story.
Sgt. Frank falls in love with a white supremicist.
Spenser is hired by a 12-year-old to investigate the murder of her older sister. The brutal slaying of an ex-convict, and the machinations of a popular preacher with political ambitions factor into the investigation.
A teenage girl's agitated condition following a rape gets her into deeper trouble when she's kidnapped by an ex-con bent on shooting Spenser.
A troubled TV news anchor helps Spenser investigate a building collapse that killed a child.
New District Attorney Rita Fiori tries to prosecute Spenser for blackmail.
A small fishing family hires Spenser to investigate the death of their father. Spenser suspects a rival fishing family, the Almeidas.
While Spenser and Hawk are in a small town to view a boxing match, Hawk is arrested, ostensibly for carrying a concealed weapon, but Spenser suspects racism may be involved.
A mobster's pregnant teenage girlfriend tries to keep her unborn son from his father.
Spenser protects a man suffering from amnesia.
A young criminal's father attacks a bus transporting convicts to the state prison.
Rita hires Spenser to investigate a troubled teenager, yet another 'Spenser helps a misguided youth' episode.
A friend of Spenser's is shot and killed while portraying Paul Revere during a Revolutionary War re-enactment.
A girl who apparently has the unique ability to 'see' through both space and time, enlists Spenser's help to solve a rash of arsons.
With the help of Hawk, a disgusted Spenser is determined to get rid of thugs who are terrorizing his Boston neighborhood.
Hawk is the main suspect when Lt. Quirk is shot, due to a recent fracas between the two. Spenser suspects a new man in town, trying to take Hawk down to make a name for himself.
A wealthy man is murdererd and, surprise, an innocent man is arrested. If you've seen one Spenser, you've seen them all.
Spenser investigates the apparent suicide of a philandering financier about to turn state's evidence to bring down insider trading. Rita has problems of her own when an old boyfriend shows up. Belson hires Spenser to find his missing wallet containing a winning lottery ticket.
Spenser and Rita go after a corrupt African.
A girl comes to Boston looking for her estranged father. Spenser decides to help her.
A pimp is wrongfully arrested for the murder of one of his girls. Spenser agonizes between pursuing the real murderer or letting the pimp take the rap.
Spenser and Hawk protect a man who owes money to men of dubious ethics. When their client, Bo Braxton tries to blackmail his creditors, he and his alcoholic teenage daughter go on the run.
Spenser becomes embroiled in the seamy Vietnamese organized crime racket after a Vietnamese crime boss uses Spenser to track down a former soldier.
Spenser loses all feeling in his right arm after he's shot while guarding a politician.
NRA poster-boy Sammy Backlin breezes into town for a book signing, unwittingly involving Spenser in a shoot out. Spenser agrees to protect Sammy from gangland thugs.
Rita and her old college friends are reunited when a fictional person they created 20 years ago is found dead in his apartment.
A prison inmate with a grudge against Hawk hires outside muscle to rub him out.
A cop who helped send a gangster's son to prison years ago has been hiding, cause the gangster wants to get him. But now he wants to come home, so he and his father, asks Spenser to act as intermediary. While the gangster is unwilling to settle for nothing less than seeing him dead. Spenser tries to see what he can do. At the same time Spenser has to deal with Susan, who came back to town, and would like to see if they have a future, but this case is taking up all of his time.
A streetwise young kid gets involved over his head in the underworld. Spenser and Hawk try to protect him from would-be killers.
Lt. Quirk faces his mortality when he suffers a heart attack. Spenser and Hawk protect him from revenge-minded villains as he recovers.
Spenser helps an old friend, an alcoholic priest who tries to help homeless teenagers, when he gets involved over his head.
Spenser becomes obsessed with an apparently suicidal woman after a chance encounter on the street.
Susan is in trouble when her claims of sexual harassment lead her college counselor to retaliate by hiring a hit man to keep her quiet. Spenser gets arrested for getting involved in a fight.
Spenser runs into an old friend while visiting a recreation of a Puritan village. Spenser does everything in his power to exonerate said friend when he's accused of a brutal slaying. As he uncovers more and more, Spenser begins to think it might be hard to clear the name of a guilty man.
Spenser's fishing trip is interrupted when he has to protect a young man who's not allowed to marry the girl he loves.
A sniper takes some shots at Spenser and Susan, and a young boy ends up dead in the crossfire. Spenser sets out to determine why such a tragedy happened and track down the shooter.
Spenser and Hawk find themselves on opposite sides of the same case. Spenser is hired to retrieve a stolen journal containing information damaging to a judge's career. Hawk is hired by the thief to extort money from the judge.
Hawk and Susan along with other people are held captive in a post office. Richard Brooks later seen on Law and Order during Season's 1 & 2 plays one of the hostage takers.
Spenser protects an old friend, Arthur, after he's assaulted and robbed. In the course of his investigation, Spenser comes across disturbing information connecting Arthur with racketeering.
When Frank's niece dies of a drug overdose, Spenser and Frank go after the men responsible.
Sammy Backlin calls Spenser for protection when he's being hunted by a 'vicious horde of bloodthirsty assassins'.
One of Spenser's old trainers lures Spenser to a deserted warehouse where Spenser is supposed to be killed, to get out from under a gambling debt. Spenser survives, then turns around and protects his trainer from the goons now after him.
Spenser protects a theater owner from gangsters, but begins to suspect she's not as innocent as she appears.
Spenser suspects insurance fraud when a building blows up. Susan has a possibly cancerous mass removed.
Spenser protects a child artist after the child witnesses a mob execution while painting in the forest.
Spenser investigates the death of a friend apparently involved with white supremicists. Hawk is rendered blind by an explosion.
Spenser assists a lawyer in proving the innocence of his client, a Navy seaman accused of murdering the captain's daughter. The only witness is a missing Polish sailor.
Spenser investigates an old child kidnapping case when he tries to track down a teenage girl's biological parents.
Spenser is hired to locate April Kyle, the missing daughter of Harry Kyle, millionaire and candidate for Governor.
One of Susan's former patients, a news reporter, is killed, Spenser investigates.
Spenser is hired out by Hugh Dixon to track down the killers of his wife and daughters.
Candy Sloane, a news reporter that Spenser used to date, hires him out as backup while she investigates a credit card fraud ring.
Rita Fiore hires Spenser to determine if two-time loser Ellis Alves really did kill a college coed. Soon everybody wants him off the case, from the investigating officer to the parents of the dead girl's boyfriend; and a professional hitman named Rugar is trying to kill him.
Frank Belson didn't ask too many questions about the past of his new wife Lisa St. Claire, even after she suddenly and mysteriously disappeared one night. He brings in Spenser to help locate her, who begins to piece together her complete life story while submerged in the Latino shadow world of the town of Proctor.
As a favor to his longtime lover Dr. Susan Silverman, Spenser agrees to investigate the stalking of a theater company director, pro bono. But before he can get started, an actor is killed by an arrow in the middle of a play. Now that there's a real-life murder to investigate, Spenser and Hawk, get to do what they do best--even if it means death threats from the Chinese underworld, being ordered out of town by the tough local police chief, and dodging bullets and crossbows at every turn. By the time they leave the quaint ocean front community, the population has decreased by three, and live theater will never be the same.
