Robert B. Parker, the blunt and beloved crime novelist who helped revive and modernize the hard-boiled genre and branded a tough guy of his own through his "Spenser" series, has died. He was 77. The cause of death was unclear. An ambulance was sent to Parker's home ...

Richard Price's meaty and fabulously enjoyable police procedural, Lush Life (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is a book I have pressed on a lot of friends. The new Robert B. Parker, Rough Weather (Quercus, £16.99), is bliss, too, because it has Spenser, Hawk and the Gray Man in it. Short stories from Kurt Vonnegut (Armageddon in Retrospect, Cape, £16.99 ...

The Stranger House by Reginald Hill (HarperCollins,

The second visitor to Illthwaite, who is also putting up at the ancient pub, the Stranger House, is a young Spaniard, Miguel (known as Mig) Ramos Elkington Madero, who has recently left a Spanish seminary, having abandoned his vocation. Gaunt, with a limp and dressed entirely in black with an unusually oldfashioned mien ...