Bloodless Coup

RIP: Spenser

Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spenser series of detective fiction, died Monday at home.

I was a fan of the Spenser books; not literature (in the sense of what is considered high art), but very well written, sparse, funny, direct books. I don't know how many years I've been reading Parker, but it has to be something close to twenty (the last paperback I've got is "Pale Kings and Princes" which came out in 1989; everything more recent I've got in hardcover, which meant I started reading him around that time). I liked the sensibilities of Spenser; his goal wasn't to right all the wrongs in the world, but to right the wrongs within his own orbit. Don't change the whole world, but do what you can to make things right. That's not a bad philosophy for life. Of course, it was fiction, so Spenser always won; but the moral certainty that Spenser had that he was doing right was a clear line through all the books. It resonated with me more than with the other great modern mystery writers (Connolly, Leon, Camilleri, Rankin; there are others). Lest you think the books were moralistic, note that I got more laughs out of Spenser than most other writers. Even after all these years the first book (Godwolf Manuscript) is still an entertaining, funny read (and it was published in the mid 1970s, I think). I also liked how Parker's characters worked simple, local mysteries: who murdered the banker, the high-school kid, the software developer. Spenser never saved the country from terrorists, or stopped a rogue military unit from killing Congress, or any of the other outlandish plots the thriller writers come up with (which can be entertaining); all Parker's plots, in the end, were fairly simple and not headline-grabbing. That simplicity was also refreshing.

I never got so much into his other series (Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall), though they weren't bad. I got those from the library. It was Spenser, however, who was his first and best creation.I used to look forward, once a year, to getting a new Spenser novel and spending an evening reading. I'll miss that.

He died at his desk, so the stories say; given how prolific he was (3 books a year, recently), that seems somehow appropriate.

I'm not sure I believe in an afterlife or not, but I hope Parker is there. If he is, I'll bet he's writing. He never seemed to stop; I imagine he's still doing it, somewhere.

Posted by baltar at January 19, 2010 05:20 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Books