In Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby, Ace Atkins gives tough-talking, fist-swinging, damsel-in-distress-saving P.I. Spenser a major reason to strap on his holster.

No one knows better than Spenser’s long-time love, Susan, that when it comes to the fairer sex, the hard-muscled hunk is a big softie—something street-smart Mattie Sullivan discovers when he takes the 14-year-old’s case in exchange for a dozen donuts. It was four years ago that Mattie’s mother was raped and murdered, and she’s convinced that the man convicted of the crime, Mickey Green, is innocent. Why? Because she saw two Dorchester toughs, both known to Spenser, drag her mother into a car. Mattie claims the police wouldn’t listen back then. And now, after Spenser comes up against his own brick wall of blue he has to wonder. When the hardened residents of Southie’s housing projects clam up, too, Spenser calls on long-time pal Hawk to scare some sense into them—and anyone else who helped make Mattie an orphan. What touches Spenser about the wise-beyond-her-years kid is her need, much like his own, to make things right. And he won’t let her down, even as he gets word a really bad guy from his past may be making a comeback.