Robert B. Parker, one of the great innovators of American crime fiction, died this week at his desk, writing, at the age of 77. His career spanned 40 years and 60 books, almost all of them bestsellers. He was twice awarded an Edgar for best novel by the Mystery Writers of America, and also received a lifetime award for his body of work and his contributions to mystery and detective fiction. He was widely praised not only for his spare, Hemingwayesque style, but for his social conscience. His early works, including God Save the Child, The Promised Land and Early Autumn, revived the hardboiled private eye genre, but also opened it up to women, people of colour and gays.
I discovered Parker early, in 1975. For those of us who loved tough-guy private eyes, he was a revelation. After Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross Macdonald, there seemed nowhere to go. But when I read God Save the Child, I realized something and someone new had arrived. Spenser was tough but tender. He had a deeply romantic side and, while he was the classic “man of honour” extolled by Chandler, he was also more complex than the older detectives. His romance with Susan Silverman meant he was a man who loved and, at times, lost. He was tender and romantic, and he even cooked.
Robert B. Parker
For the next decade, I was first in line for every Spenser novel written. He touched on all the things that were important in my life: feminism, family history, relationships, romance. Long into the series, he weakened, but he came back strong in the Jesse Stone books and, while he could be exasperating, he was consistent, sticking to character to drive the story.
Parker was an expert on all things hardboiled. His PhD thesis covered tough guys from Natty Bumppo to Philip Marlowe. He could have stayed an academic at Northeastern University in Boston, but he missed Marlowe. He often recalled how he realized that he'd read and reread all the novels by Raymond Chandler, that there was no more Marlowe. So he wrote an homage to Chandler, beautifully keeping the tone and style of the original.
The Godwulf Manuscript got him noticed, but it was his second novel, God Save the Child, that took him out of Chandler's shadow. The book was shocking, dealing with child abuse, and with a plot centring on crimes worse than murder. God Save the Child introduced a whole new constellation of characters, including Susan Silverman, the therapist who became Spenser's lover, companion and muse. Silverman, based loosely on Parker's wife Joan, was intelligent and self-sufficient, and her relationship with Spenser gave the novels depth.
The introduction of a gay theme in Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980) was another groundbreaking development. Later in his career, Parker introduced Boston PI Sunny Randall, the Sheriff Jesse Stone series, set in rural New England, and western novels including Appaloosa, which was made into a film starring Viggo Mortensen. Several of the Spenser and Stone novels were filmed for television, and a series, Spenser, was also spun off the novels.
Parker was often asked how long the Spenser series would go on. His answer was always that he'd keep writing as long as people kept reading. He was prolific to the end, publishing two Spenser novels and Brimstone, a western, in 2009. He once stated that he wanted to keep writing until he died. He did.
Margaret Cannon reviews crime fiction for the Globe and Mail.
