In Pursuit of Spenser (21 page)

I wonder if, in some safety deposit box on a street shaded by elms in a postcard-perfect Boston suburb, there isn’t a
secret history of Hawk. But, even if Parker had written such a file, and I somehow got a hold of the keys and the location of the bank, I wouldn’t use them. I’d take a quick trip on the freeway from my house in Los Angeles to the beach and, standing at the edge of the ocean, toss those keys into the waves.

It’s better not to know too much about Hawk. He’s an elemental force who takes on the world in his own terms and that’s plenty.

As Hawk might say, “It be like that.”

| S. J. ROZAN |

AH, SUSAN SILVERMAN
,
the girlfriend we all love to hate.

Has ever a fictional character raised such ire, or caused such expressions of disdain and disgust—over and over?

As we do with real people who become our friends, when we come across a character we like in a book, our response is usually to stick with him. Or her. Thus, series. (And long-term friendships.) A character who gives readers a headache usually results in a book being prematurely donated to the library sale. Or, in a more robust reaction, thrown against the living room wall.

But Susan? No, it’s not that way with Susan.

Readers—and they are but few—who don’t like Spenser have no opinion on Susan. They’re through with her when
they’re through with him; let’s move on. But most readers love Spenser, even at his most wobbly. Love Spenser, love Hawk, okay. But for many readers that love does not extend to former guidance counselor, lately Harvard PhD psychotherapist Susan Silverman. Over the course of Parker’s nearly forty-year career, readers hungrily snapped up each new Spenser book, gobbled down Spenser and Hawk—and spat Susan out. Most of the satellite and asteroid characters circling those two glowing suns—Paul Giacomin, Marty Quirk, Frank Belson, Rachel Wallace, even baddies like Joe Broz—met with reader approval. But not poor Susan Silverman. She’s usually seen as the price the reader has to pay for admission to Spenser’s world.

In 2003, Louis B. Park wrote in the
Houston Chronicle
that “Spenser readers are pretty much divided into two camps: those who love Susan Silverman and Spenser’s dedication to her (not to mention constant mooning over her) and those who wish she would fall out a window.”

With “constant mooning,” Park makes his own position clear. Personally I’ve always been in the first camp (which doesn’t make the weaker Spenser books—the books Parker wrote when he and his wife, Joan, were separated—any stronger for me). I read Parker when he first came out, so I knew Susan when. I met her when Spenser did. I think that matters.

Susan’s introduction is intriguing, in view of what later becomes of her: “Susan Silverman wasn’t beautiful, but there was a tangibility about her . . . It was hard to tell her age but there was a sense about her of intelligent maturity which put her on my side of thirty.”

Tangibility, intelligent maturity, and a lack of beauty that’s worth mentioning—Susan Silverman is an adult, a worthy partner for Spenser. This isn’t the blonde bombshell whose
legs go on forever, walking in the PI’s open office door with a concocted hard-luck story he knows isn’t the whole truth but goes along with anyway. In fact, when they meet it isn’t because she needs him, it’s because he needs her. As things go on, she doesn’t fall into bed with him right away, and when she does, it’s on her terms. A lot of their early relationship involves serious conversation; she tells him when she doesn’t like something, and he tells her, too. They talk about The Code, Spenser’s personal guide to how a man must live. It tends to be the case that readers, like me, who start with the early Spenser books think more highly of Susan than readers who come in later in the series. Early on, Susan shines with her own glow. By the middle of the series, Spenser’s adoration glares so brightly that it obliterates her.

Which is what Susan thinks, too; it’s why she leaves him. She needs to find herself, to know who she is without Spenser. This is a need in her that Spenser, as a modern man, tries very hard to understand, or at least to acknowledge as important; it also leads, in
A Catskill Eagle
, to one of the bloodiest drawn-out rampages in Spenserdom.

In this, one of Parker’s longest books, violent killing sprees alternate with meditative stretches of helplessness as Spenser and Hawk search for Susan—even though it’s not entirely clear that she wants to be found or will come away with them when they find her. At the beginning of the book, Spenser locks up some cops when he springs Hawk from jail, threatening all but hurting none. A little later he and Hawk kidnap some hookers to rob their pimp. Because they need money, that’s why. To find Susan, you understand. So it’s okay, right? He’s a nasty piece of work, this pimp, and Spenser kills him and his bodyguard to protect the hookers from the pimp’s wrath later on—wrath that would be occasioned not by anything the hookers did, but by what Spenser and Hawk are
about to do. It’s calculated and cold-blooded, but Spenser has the grace to throw up afterward. By the end of the book, sentries, bodyguards, and hired assassins scatter the landscape like blood-soaked autumn leaves. A group of illegal aliens is asked to create a diversion for Spenser and Hawk, though it’s clear many of them might die.

“What becomes of them,” I said.

Hawk shrugged.

“What is becoming of them now,” I said.

Hawk shrugged again.

I shook my head. “No, let’s look straight at it. I don’t care what happens to them if it gets Susan out.”

Hawk nodded.

Again, Spenser at least has the decency to admit he’s not doing any of this to do these men a favor, although they sure could use a favor, and how it works out for them means nothing to him. Such, by now, in the series overall as well as in this particular book, is Spenser’s love for Susan: all-consuming and unstoppable. Everything—including, around the frayed edges, Spenser’s own Code—falls before it.

Susan Silverman, based on Robert B. Parker’s wife Joan (Joan Parker denies it, but is there anyone who can’t see it?), came into the series when it became clear to Parker that Spenser was an ongoing character: that there would be, in fact, a series. Parker wrote his first book,
The Godwulf Manuscript
, as a bid to quit teaching, which he claimed to hate. (“Hate” may be hyperbole; Parker was known to come out with pronouncements to make himself sound tougher and more curmudgeonly than he actually was. In my experience, though his ghost will scowl, he was a pretty sweet guy.) Parker’s study as a literature PhD student was the private eye novel, so for his
own first novel, he wrote what he loved. Spenser was Parker’s own alter ego, which Parker, for his part, never denied. (“He’s taller, though,” was all he said.) Once Parker saw that Spenser would continue to live, he apparently didn’t want to allow him to go through life without a great love. In the first books, Spenser has a girlfriend, Brenda Loring. We never get the idea she’s the love of his life, but he’s not shagging everything in a skirt, either. He meets Susan in
God Save the Child
; in
Mortal Stakes
, they make it into bed, and Brenda Loring becomes a thing of the past. Spenser strays a little—with Candy Sloan in
A Savage Place
—but that leads to her death, which creates a huge existential crisis for Spenser. And that, in turn, leads to the way he leans on Susan, which leads to her leaving him. In other words, Candy’s death, Susan’s defection, and all the carnage that attends Spenser’s efforts to get her back are his fault: he lets the strength of the Susan-worshipping force field falter, and disaster results.

Reader reaction to Susan (and to Spenser’s Susan-gazing) is an interesting phenomenon. Some readers, as I say, like her and enjoy her presence in the books, even at her most sketchy. That sketchiness would be the final dozen or so Spenser books Parker wrote, when Susan is reduced to a series of tics: the tiny bites, the clothes, the beauty (which seemed to grow as the series went on). By then, of course, Hawk is a series of tics, too—the sharp suits, the know-how with ever more exotic weaponry—but we like his better. Even so, precious few of those readers who like Susan all through are pro-Susan with the vehemence of the anti-Susan forces. Among those in the anti- camp, Susan Silverman doesn’t just occasion shoulder shrugs or who-needs-her annoyance. She’s actively disparaged and disliked, to the extent that in 2009 writer and blogger Mark R. Jones wrote a straightforward, Parkeresque piece, focusing on weapons,
strategy, and tactics, about a hired hit man. It was entitled “Killing Susan Silverman.”

The psychologist worked out of her home and had clients scheduled all day. Her private investigator boyfriend and his sometimes business partner were working a surveillance case in Gloucester . . . The psychologist lived in Cambridge, on Linnaean Street, in a green Victorian which had a small fenced-in yard for the annoying dog she owned . . . [Note: the objection to Susan Silverman goes so far as to include poor Pearl, who never annoyed anyone.] As he showered Cash thought about the psychologist. As far as he could tell, the private eye boyfriend would be better off without her. During the two weeks of surveillance Cash had determined she was high maintenance and a very annoying woman. Other than her obvious overt physical good looks, there was very little to recommend her as a friend or a lover.

Leaving aside the thought that Mr. Jones may have had a little extra time on his hands in 2009, sixteen hundred words is a lot of trouble to go to for the dreamworld destruction of someone else’s character.

But it’s typical of the strong feelings readers have. When asked, the explanation often is, “She’s so damn perfect!” Of course, she’s not. She’s messy, strewing her clothes everywhere; she’s always late; she takes tiny, nibbly bites of food, but slaps Spenser’s hand when he goes for her uneaten sandwich; she wears a lot of makeup and leaves that everywhere, too. Spenser is aware of all this. Consider the scene where Spenser takes up with Linda Thomas in
Valediction
, and they go to the movies in the rain.

The parking lot had been temporarily diminished by construction and it was crowded. I found a slot at the far end of the lot.

“Want me to drop you at the door before I park?” I said.

“No, I kind of like the rain,” Linda said.

“Me, too.” Susan would have wanted to be dropped.

Spenser likes the rain, but Susan wouldn’t have walked in it with him. Then there’s the aforementioned lack of beauty, though Spenser notices that less and less. No, Susan Silverman isn’t perfect. But what if she were? Would that be a problem? Is anyone really bothered by perfection? Because there is one perfect person in the Spenser universe, and that’s Hawk.

Hawk’s unflappable. He’s tireless. He’s smart. He can use at the expert level any weapon known to man, including his own fists and feet. He has impeccable taste in wine. He’s great looking, too, and a snappy dresser, and he puts all of his talents and his own moral code at Spenser’s service without being in the least subservient, without any hint of a chip on his shoulder. Anyone got a problem with Hawk’s perfection? Didn’t think so.

But in any case, Susan’s not perfect and Spenser never says she is. Which makes it all the more galling that he worships her.

Why?

For a couple of reasons.

Spenser—as any hero—has two kinds of fans: people who want to know him, and people who want to be him. (The fact that he’s not real doesn’t interfere with the desires of either group; in fact, it facilitates them. That’s what fiction’s for.)

Spenser himself isn’t perfect either. The only reason we readers know this is because he narrates the books, so he lets us in on his doubts, his mistakes, and, importantly, how badly
he feels about them. (If Hawk were narrating this series, Spenser would seem perfect, no?) He’s not perfect, but the inside view only makes him more appealing. Who among us wouldn’t want a guy with his skills, talents, brains, and resolve, plus his morality and essential tenderheartedness, willing to sacrifice anything for us?

But for us, not for Susan Silverman. Spenser’s adoration of Susan is vast and total, but we don’t see the reason for it. Even those of us who like her think Spenser’s over the top about her. She’s not so spectacular that we can understand the stratospheric level his worship reaches—nor can we see why she replaces us in his affection. A crime writer friend of mine, who says she’s one of Parker’s biggest fans and has read all of the books multiple times, told me she could never stand Susan and would expostulate at length on her reasons until her sister, also a big Parker fan, stopped her one day with, “You don’t really hate Susan. You hate the fact that Spenser loves her better than he loves you.”