Parker (Robert B.) is born in Springfield.

Robert Parker graduates from Colby College, serves in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and arrives in Boston in approximately 1965. He receives a graduate degree from Boston University, teaches at Northeastern University, publishes the first of a popular series of crime novels in 1973 which become the basis for a television series that first airs in 1985.* Parker goes on to write more than 60 books, including Westerns and young adult novels. He dies at his writing desk in his home in Cambridge on January 18, 2010.