In Pursuit of Spenser (15 page)

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More seriously, though, the fact that Bob died just across the river from Boston, at his desk in the Cambridge home he shared with his wife, Joan, and while writing, would, I think, have given him at least some solace during what we can only hope was a mercifully quick passing.

Bob. Rest in peace. You earned it ten times over, and we will never forget you.

| BRENDAN DUBOIS |

DURING THE BENIGHTED
years of the early 1970s, a time of gas lines, a constitutional crisis, disco, and polyester leisure suits, most enthusiasts and observers of the mystery field generally accepted that the private eye novel, if not dead, was at least on life support, fading as fast as a snowflake on a hot stove. The idea of an armed man seeking justice on his own, using his fists and his intelligence, seemed out of time and place during an era when America was in decline and in retreat, when the presidency itself was under siege.

By its very nature, the private eye novel depended on a main character of honor, skills, and fortitude to carry the narrative. But in the troubled times of the 1970s, when the country seemed impotent, where questions of competence and truthfulness were directed to the very foundations of
American society and government, was there really a literary PI hero out there who readers could possibly identify with?

The answer was yes, and what an answer it turned out to be.

It came from a relatively unknown college professor from Northeastern University, who published his first novel in 1973 featuring a one-named private investigator: Spenser. The first few paragraphs of that novel seemed to indicate that a new version of the smart, wisecracking private eye was making its debut.

From page one, chapter one, of
The Godwulf Manuscript
:

The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse. It was paneled in big squares of dark walnut, with ornately figured maroon drapes at the long windows. There was maroon carpeting and the furniture was black leather with brass studs. The office was much nicer than the classrooms; maybe I should have worn a tie.

From these few sentences, it seemed a worthy successor had been found to a noble lineage that included such usual suspects as Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, and Travis McGee. Quiet, hard, determined men who not only walked down mean streets, but owned them and didn’t flinch from violence. Firearms and cheap drinks, diner and restaurant food defended and sustained them, while the women in their lives, for the most part, were babes, dames, or broads. Their bleak lives were filled with yearnings and past desires, tainted with dark cynicism about the world about them.

Increasingly enthusiastic readers and reviewers learned Spenser was as quick with his fists as with a quip as he worked the streets and alleyways of Boston. Standing just an inch over six feet, he weighed about two hundred pounds, was a
Korean combat vet, a boxer, and then a Massachusetts state police officer. He worked out at a gym and usually ran five miles a day. His nose had been broken a few times. He often carried a firearm and, when things got out of hand and his life and those of others were in danger, he didn’t hesitate to use deadly force. While the bodies didn’t pile up in heaps as in many other detective novels, the use of deadly force was always an option for Spenser.

Spenser sounded cool. He sounded mean. He sounded sharp.

In the second book of what would later prove to be a forty-book series,
God Save the Child
, Spenser starts a monogamous relationship with psychologist Susan Silverman. He always flirted with women, but he always went back to Susan. No one-night stands for Spenser, no babes or hook-ups like his famous predecessors.

Okay, then. Maybe Spenser was just a bit different from that noble lineage.

Like many private detectives, he’d conduct surveillances from his car. For lunch during these surveillances, he’d pick up fresh Syrian bread, feta cheese, and a pound of kalamata olives.

Sure, why not. Other private investigators lived on sandwiches while doing stakeouts. What’s a little feta cheese among friends?

He loved to cook fine food, making meals such as pork medallions with rice and a pineapple-based cream sauce, or pasta with spiced oil and broccoli.

Um, hold on.

He drank beers such as Utica Club Cream Ale, Labatt 50, and Pilsner Urquell.

Huh?

He was proud that his name was identical to that of
Edmund Spenser, the sixteenth-century English author of
The Faerie Queene
.

What. The. Hell?

Who was this guy, anyway?

It might have been easy to dismiss Spenser as a nut or a wimp, except a close reading of the novels show that he is anything but. He never backs down from outside pressure, is incredibly loyal to friends and associates, and is willing to expose himself to great danger to do what’s right.

But in addition to that traditional two-fisted, hardboiled private detective, there’s also the Spenser who not only tosses off literary references, but also enjoys gourmet cooking and has a healthy respect and admiration for women.

Good food and gourmet cooking is an integral part of Spenser’s life. In every Spenser novel, there’s either a cooking or a shopping lesson. In
Playmates
, after a dreary day of reviewing basketball game tapes with a friend who’s a sports expert to see if a star player is shaving points, Spenser returns home and thinks of his evening meal. Most private detectives, hell, most people, when driving home after a particularly rough day, head for the nearest drive-through, a frozen dinner, or their collection of Chinese take-out menus.

But not Spenser.

This is what he’s thinking:

I was playing a Matt Dennis tape in my car and planning supper. Fresh crabmeat, maybe, sautéed in olive oil and white wine with red and yellow and green peppers, and mushrooms, and served over rice. Or I could pound out some chicken thigh cutlets and marinate them in lemon juice and tarragon and a drop of virgin olive oil and cook them on my new Jenn-Air indoor grill. I could have a
couple more beers while I waited for them to marinate, and I could eat them with some broccoli and maybe boiled red potatoes. I’d put a honey mustard dressing on the broccoli. Or maybe tortellini . . .

Leaving aside the fact of who the heck Matt Dennis is (okay, I know, I know, he was a famous jazz singer and writer and arranger; thank you, Google), can you imagine any kind of private detective thinking like that, besides Spenser?

Probably not. But Parker got away with it with Spenser. Because right from the very first books, it was clear that Spenser lived by his own rules and codes, and if he enjoyed cooking and fine food, by God, so what? Who would dare criticize or tease him? (Except for Hawk, of course, but Hawk inhabited a universe all his own.) But don’t get me wrong. Spenser wasn’t a snob. He just enjoyed fine food and good restaurants and interesting recipes.

In all of the Spenser novels, all the restaurants that Our Hero visited and enjoyed were described with such detail and affection that you knew that Bob Parker had tested them . . . performing what some would call literary research.

Nice work if you can get it, eh?

In fact, just a few miles from where I’m writing this, there’s a well-known restaurant in downtown North Conway, New Hampshire, called Horsefeathers. In
Early Autumn
, Spenser is driving from Massachusetts to Maine, bringing along a teenage boy, Paul Giacomin, who is caught in the middle of a custody fight between his parents. But even when on the road with a sullen teenager, Spenser still has time to eat:

We got to North Conway, New Hampshire, about one thirty in the afternoon. I stopped at a restaurant called Horse-feathers opposite the green in the center of town. There was
a softball diamond on the green and some kids were playing a game without umpires.

I said, “Let’s eat.”

He said nothing, but got out of the car and went into the restaurant with me. We’d been in rural New England. Now we were in rural chic. North Conway is a major ski resort in winter, and summer homes abound around it in New Hampshire and across the border in Maine. Horsefeathers had brass and hanging plants and looked just like restaurants in San Francisco.

The food was good and at two twenty we were in the car again heading for Fryeburg.

What’s wonderful about this scene is that in a place of honor over the Horsefeathers’ bar to this day is an autographed copy of
Early Autumn
, a printed copy of the above excerpt, and a handwritten note from Bob Parker to the then-owner of the restaurant stating that he always had a good meal at Horsefeathers.

But why gourmet food? Why the recipes? Why the fascination with getting fresh ingredients for complicated meals? Why not—like so many of us, including other PIs—rely on frozen food, meals in a box, or take-out food?

My theory, as strange sounding as barbecued ice cream, I admit, is that Spenser’s love of fine food and cooking reflects on his professional life as a private investigator. Think clues, and then think ingredients. For what does an investigator do but look at, evaluate, and review the key ingredients to a solution, not unlike what a chef does when looking at possible ingredients for a fine meal? The ingredients are pondered, combined with other factors, and are pondered and tested yet again, all while looking to the ultimate pay-off of a grand solution to a crime—or an award-winning recipe for a special gourmet meal.

So consider again Spenser’s interest in fine food. Look again at that earlier scene in
Playmates
, where he’s going through the list of options of what he might have for dinner. Perhaps that’s also the template Spenser uses when he’s considering what he’s learned about a crime, juggling different aspects of a case, looking for that perfect solution versus that perfect meal.

Then there is Spenser’s unorthodox approach toward the women in his life, or, more accurately, the woman. Spenser also has a healthy interest in fine women, especially one fine woman, Susan Silverman. Save for the first novel in the forty-book series, Spenser and Susan are together, one way or another, in every one.

Why is that?

Why Susan Silverman?

Or to be a bit more general, why a steady and monogamous relationship? What does it gain a private investigator and a loner like Spenser? Most other PIs we’ve known and loved other the years did quite well without the proverbial “ball and chain.” Women came and went depending on the character and depending on the story. They played a supporting role, serving the needs of the plot and the more, ahem, basic needs of the male private investigator.

When it’s Spenser and women, it’s time for another theory.

Remember that what brings all private investigators together is that code of honor and the need to walk down those mean streets to seek justice, to seek a solution. Those streets can be dark, they can be forbidding, but they can also be enticing, seductive, and romantic in a twisted way. Recall Joseph Conrad and his
Heart of Darkness
, which portrays with great skill the pure seductiveness of an evil place with no limits. Shadowy places that are not only acknowledged but explored by the strangers who come there to seek money and fame, among other things. There are literally no rules, and anything is permissible.

From
Heart of Darkness
: “He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.”

Ah, yes, “the horror! the horror!”

So what can bring a man (or woman) back from those evil, seductive mean streets, that heart of darkness, to a place of safety and what passes for normal life?

An anchor, a soul mate, someone to whom you can return and confess all, without being judged, without being criticized. After you’ve seen men fall and die because of you, when you have the stench of spilled blood and burnt gunpowder on your hands, it’s a wise and wonderful thing to have an understanding woman at your side.

Spenser loves women, appreciates women, and admires women. But never does he see them as objects or things or lesser than himself.

So. Cooking and feminism. Not the usual attributes that pop into mind when one thinks of private investigators. How did this all happen?