Today is the birthday of Robert B Parker (1932 – 2010) who was born on September 17, 1932 in Springfield Massachusetts. Springfield is also the Birthplace of Basketball, Indian Motorcycles, Dr. Seuss, the Springfield Armory, and the writer of this article’s father, Tony Pagourgis.
Before becoming a published author, Parker served in the U.S. Army as a Morse code radio operator during the Korean War. He worked as a technical writer for a few companies like Raytheon, edited corporate magazines, and then worked in advertising before he started teaching.
In 1973, his first novel The Godwulf Manuscript was published. The book featured his most famous shamus, Spenser, “spelled like the poet.” Spenser’s first name was never revealed. In The Godwulf Manuscript he is hired by a university to retrieve a stolen medieval document, murder soon follows. This series is credited with reviving the detective genre which fell out of favor around this time.
Spenser was a throwback to the hard boiled detectives like Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade. But he was a product of the post Civil Rights Movement and Age of Feminism 1960s and therefore a little more palatable when viewing him through a modern day lens. He was also faithfully in love with his longtime companion, a psychologist named Susan Silverman. This broke the mold for most private detectives in the genre who are eternal bachelors and usually chase multiple women per book.
Spenser’s also a great cook, an ex-boxer, and a weightlifter. He’s a lover of donuts, the Red Sox, and dogs. If that’s not enough to like the character all you have to do is just read a few passages and you’ll want to hang out with the guy. He’s basically a 1970s Phillip Marlowe if he lived in Boston and not Los Angeles.
Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone
Parker also created a female detective named Sunny Randall. Like Spenser, Randall is a private eye based out of Boston. She’s a former cop and an aspiring painter. Another trait she shares with Spenser (and the author) is that she is a dog lover and owns a miniature bull terrier named Rosie. The first book in that series is Family Honor.
Another detective series is that of Jesse Stone, a former LAPD detective with a checkered past who starts a new career as a police chief in a small New England town. Starting with Night Passage (1997) the Jesse Stone series consists of nine books. Tom Selleck plays Stone in the TV adapted movies. I haven’t seen nor read these but having grown up in a small New England town, I might have add that to the queue.
Phillip Marlowe Novels
In 1988 Raymond Chandler’s estate asked Parker to finish a novel that he started shortly before his death. The result was Poodle Springs, where Chandler wrote the first four chapters in 1958 and Parker came out of the bullpen to close out the book in the late 80’s.
Parker then went on to write another Phillip Marlowe book, Perchance to Dream which was the sequel to The Big Sleep. This is the last of the Marlowe series and the only one Chandler didn’t touch.
After Parker’s death the Spenser, Stone, and Randall series all live on. Michael Brandman, and Reed Farrel Coleman have written a few Jesse Stone books since Parker’s passing. Sports journalist and longtime friend of Parker’s Mike Lupica wrote a Sunny Randall book. And Ace Atkins has penned a few Spenser novels, keeping the character and Parker’s memory alive.
