In Pursuit of Spenser (22 page)

Ain’t it the truth?

This, by the way, was not a problem in the crime novel until Spenser. Some of the earlier PIs were married, and the literature includes some devoted detective couples. (Think about Nick and Nora Charles.) But none of the iconic detectives, the guys who slouch in trench coats under street-lights smoking cigarettes in the rain, were closely connected to anyone. Not even pals; they had friends, and lovers, and sometimes went to a great deal of dangerous trouble for them, but none was ever connected the way Spenser is to Susan. None was attached, none was tied down.

Which brings us to the second group, the readers who don’t want to know Spenser, they want to be Spenser.

By which, I think, they don’t really mean they want to be
Spenser
. They want to be the guy in the trench coat in
the rain, but they want to be that guy with all of Spenser’s erudition, with his truly smart (as opposed to merely facile) self-deprecating wit, his ability to cook as well as he fights, his sure self-knowledge and his Code.

But not his baggage. Which means Susan. There’s also Hawk, yes, and Paul, but they’re on their own. They come and go, and though Spenser worries about them if he thinks they need worrying about—and would, and has been known to, go to the ends of the earth to help them if they need help—their coming and going, their presence and absence, doesn’t bother him much. Not so with Susan. When she’s there, he worships her. When, in
Valediction
, she leaves him, it’s the end of the world.

One of the attractions of the lone hero PI figure is his loneness. We’re all encumbered, tied down by mundane obligations but also by our love for the people in our lives. We wouldn’t want to be without them, really, but there’s still that whispered, nagging question, sometimes rising to a scream depending on the circumstances: “What would life be like if I were free?”

We want to be Spenser in all his hero glory, but while we’re being that, we also want to be free. When the blonde with the bogus story and the legs that go on forever walks into the office, we want to be able to follow that wherever it goes. We want to take whatever risks we dare with our own lives, without wondering whether the life insurance is paid up. At the end of the day, as the city darkens, we want to sit in our open-door office with our bottle of bourbon, feet up on the desk, watching the neon sign blinking on and off across the rain-slick street. Alone.

That’s what Susan takes from us, and it’s not Susan who does it. It’s Spenser. Parker, humanitarian that he was, no matter what he said, will not let us take the easy way out. We may
want escapism, a hero to wish we were, pretend we could be, for a few reading hours. But he won’t let us have it. Of Spenser, Parker said, “What makes him interesting is the struggle for his autonomy; for Spenser, it is continuing struggle. Part of the reason he has to struggle is that he has allowed himself to be in love and to care. The struggle between care and commitment and autonomy lends tension to the form.”

Robert B. Parker was a vast influence on the genre in many ways. Indeed, it’s a commonplace that
The Godwulf Manuscript
lifted the PI novel from the grave. Parker did that, bestowing life on a corpse; but like anyone who’s been through a near-death experience, the resurrected PI came back changed. Now, he is attached. Committed. Tied down. In other words, like us, he is human.

All fictional PIs after Spenser have had, in whatever ways they could, to deal with connection and commitment—at least the possibility of those things, if not their fulfillment. This is a sea change in the nature of this American hero. In forging a new shape for the PI novel as, revivified, it moves into the future, nothing else Parker did was as important as creating Susan Silverman.

| MAX ALLAN COLLINS |
AND
| MATTHEW CLEMENS |

IN 1973, WITH
the publication of
The Godwulf Manuscript
, Spenser put himself up for hire for the first time. This classic Philip Marlowe–style detective was wrapped in modern trappings that quickly built a major following for Robert B. Parker and his appealing hero. Almost immediately fans began to speculate on what actor might best portray the Boston knight in a big-screen or television incarnation. Similar questions were raised about supporting players Hawk, Spenser’s black sidekick (and id), and Susan Silverman, the detective’s love interest (and conscience).

That question would finally be answered on September 20, 1985, when ABC first aired a TV series based on the novels, adding a new household phrase to Parker’s already well-known detective—
Spenser: For Hire
. Though the show
ran only three seasons, a modest success of sixty-five episodes, its impact was such that even some longtime readers of the series began to refer to Robert B. Parker’s
Spenser: For Hire
novels.

• •

The show snagged a decent time slot—Tuesday night, following the network’s up-and-coming spring replacement,
Moonlighting
, featuring Cybill Shepherd and somebody named Bruce Willis. Unfortunately, the Shepherd/Willis series was not yet a ratings juggernaut; though lead-in
Moonlighting
came in at number twenty-four in a year when
The Cosby Show
ruled the Nielsen ratings,
Spenser: For Hire
failed to crack the top thirty.

In season two, consigned to the no-man’s land of Saturday night where
Star Trek
had once been sent to fail, the program played out its run. Though the series had a devoted following and won critical favor, making the coveted cover of
TV Guide
on July 19, 1986,
Spenser: For Hire
never reached the Nielson heights. Still,
Spenser
was enough of a hit to last three seasons and even spawn a short-lived Hawk spin-off.

Yet even as lesser-known shows of the 1980s have found their way to home video,
Spenser: For Hire
has not, despite the wide built-in audience of Robert B. Parker readers. (Jesse Stone, anyone?) Though it aired during the boom of home video, the show was never released on VHS tape. And, although assorted clips can be found on the Internet, the series has practically disappeared—nowhere to be seen in syndication, no boxed seasons on DVD.

Five years after the demise of the series, however, the popular character returned in four Spenser movies running between 1993 and 1995 on the Lifetime Network (at that time, not yet “the Network for Women”). These
again featured Robert Urich as Spenser and Avery Brooks as Hawk, though other supporting players did not make the transition.

In 1999, the character returned in the first of three TV movies (with Joe Mantegna as Spenser) produced for A&E. This trio of Spenser adaptations has also virtually disappeared, leaving only the four mid-’90s films as readily available evidence of a television version of Parker’s popular character.

Popular literary private eyes have often had a hard go of it in film and on TV for a reason tied to their source material: Robert B. Parker—like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane before him—wrote in a distinctive first-person style that encouraged reader identification. These writers were fairly stingy with physical descriptions—yes, we know the private eye is a big guy who can handle himself (Spenser is a burly ex-boxer) but little else—and readers caught up in an effective first-person narrative create their own mental images of a protagonist.

Marlowe and Hammer went through a dizzying array of actors on the big screen. Hammer had two relatively successful runs with Darren McGavin and Stacy Keach TV incarnations in the ’50s and ’80s respectively, while Marlowe flopped in a 1950s network version starring B-movie actor Phillip Carey, with a more successful two-season cable run in the ’80s featuring Powers Boothe. Detectives whose adventures were told in the third-person by their authors have tended to fare better on screen—Perry Mason, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and especially secret agent James Bond.

As Parker himself said in a
TV Guide
article,

My novels are told in the first person. We see everything from Spenser’s point of view. Television is, by definition,
third person. We see everything through the camera. In my novels, we see Spenser from the inside. On television we see him, as we must, from the outside.

A reader’s idea of a detective encountered in a first-person narrative can clash badly with the physical representation that an actor brings to bear. But while not every Robert B. Parker fan loved Robert Urich as Spenser, few would deny his appeal, and most would embrace him as a first-rate, even ideal, small-screen interpretation. A veteran of television and movies, the ruggedly handsome Urich earned stardom in a thirty-seven episode run of
S.W.A.T
. (1975–1976), then in sixty-nine episodes as private investigator Dan Tanna on Michael Mann’s successful
Vega$
(1978–1981). To Spenser, Urich brought an easygoing charm and, due partially to his broad-shouldered physique, an understated menace. Though some thought him too affable for the role—he would, after all, later become captain of
The Love Boat: The Next Wave
—for many others, Urich
was
Spenser.

Like the detective he portrayed, Urich was capable, an adjective the actor himself once used to describe the character. Not merely able, “capable” meant that Spenser was a man to be reckoned with. Though plenty smart, he might not always be the brightest man in the room, or the biggest, or the strongest, but he was always the most capable. He could take it, dish it out, hold his own with fists or guns, and still find the time and summon the wit to crack wise as he did it. The part was perfect for Urich, and he proclaimed it the role he enjoyed most in his career.

Urich has an appeal in the intimate medium of series television that places him on that short list of casually charismatic actors who own the heroes they embody. It’s a list that includes the likes of James Garner and David Janssen, and
perhaps half a dozen others. In TV terms, Urich was a “great” actor, and his feel for Spenser—at least the small-screen variation thereof—was largely what made the series work.

The actor in particular knew just how to toss off a Spenser wisecrack in a manner that seemed neither obnoxious nor unlikely—there was a wink and a self-deprecating touch to the delivery of these signature lines. It’s not hard to imagine readers picturing Urich as Spenser while reading the books and taking the smart-ass edge off many of Parker’s lines. Whether that’s a good thing or not is up to the individual reader . . . and viewer.

Displaying his own brand of smoldering charisma, Avery Brooks brought to life Hawk, Spenser’s de facto partner and added muscle when needed. A respected acting teacher, Brooks had little television experience before
Spenser: For Hire
, but was so compelling and convincing in his role that he became a break-out star, leading to the 1989 spinoff series,
A Man Named Hawk
, which lasted thirteen episodes. (From 1993 to 1999, Brooks enjoyed even greater success on the series
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
, appearing as Captain Sisko in all 173 episodes of its run.)

As Hawk, Brooks flirted with an over-the-top blaxploitation approach—Hawk really did seem at times to have wandered off the set of
Shaft’s Big Score
—but his swagger had a tongue-in-cheek nature that sold it without, surprisingly, making the character seem any less menacing.

The only other cast member to appear in all sixty-five episodes of
Spenser: For Hire
was character actor Ron McLarty, who ably portrayed world-weary Boston police detective sergeant Frank Belson. Having begun acting in the early ’70s, McLarty was a veteran of stage and television before
Spenser
. Since that show he has appeared in several films, worked on television, and become a popular reader of audio books by
authors as varied as Stephen King, Louis L’Amour, and Clive Cussler.

In seasons one and three, Susan Silverman was portrayed by Barbara Stock. A school counselor, as in the books, Susan graduated from Harvard with her PhD and became a psychiatrist. After the 1985–86 season, producers decided Stock was out—suddenly Susan left for San Francisco to “find herself.”

Actress Carolyn McCormick was brought in as Assistant District Attorney Rita Fiore to provide Spenser with a new love interest. The writers had found little for Stock to do and even less for McCormick in her single season. When producers wanted Stock back for season three, it took a personal plea from Urich himself to bring about her return. He would later say it was a mistake not to have fought for Stock when she was removed from the show in 1986. Stock, for her part, appreciated Urich’s (somewhat belated) support.

The first two seasons also featured Academy Award nominee (
Sometimes a Great Notion
) Richard Jaeckel as Lieutenant Martin Quirk. Though credited through the third episode of the last season, Jaeckel disappeared from the show after that, for reasons never specified.