I consider myself a big reader with close to 60 books per year. I had started out with Robert B. Parker's "Goodwulf Manuscript" very early on my reading career, after I had read somewhere that Parker was an epigone of Raymond Chandler, one of my heroes in the early Eighties. But it wasn't my style at that time, too philosophical, too imposing. So I stopped for twenty five years until I started to notice the Jesse Stone TV specials with Tom Selleck by accident. I watched the shows, read the books and got drawn into Parker's Boston, Mass. universe of characters.
One fine day I started out on Spenser and similar to buying a complete DVD series in a box, I bought all Spenser books from 1 to 40. After half a year, I am now almost current ("School Days" being the last one).
I like the long term development of the characters life without a perceptible change in characters. Spenser will always be in love with Susan, Hawk will always be Hawk, Vinnie Morris is always reliably available and Susan will never learn to cook.

The hardest thing to do when writing is finding the voice for the characters so that they act and talk consequently after their character. Spenser's code and type makes him behave one way and not another.

About ten books to go, plus a handful of Sunny Randall's. Too bad it has to end!