In Pursuit of Spenser (26 page)

Compare this to a confrontation Spenser has with a heavy machine operator named Eddie in chapter six of
Promised Land
. Spenser describes Eddie this way: “a big blond kid . . . He was a weightlifter: lots of tricep definition and overdeveloped pectoral muscles.” Spenser goes on to say that, “I’d have been more impressed with him if he weren’t carrying a twenty-pound roll around his middle.” Spenser is in a Cape Cod bar trying to find information on a runaway
housewife named Pam Shepard, whom Eddie is alleged to have slept with. After bragging about his sexual prowess and the ease with which he bedded Pam, Eddie becomes belligerent. Spenser, a former heavyweight boxer, tries to dissuade Eddie from this course of action. When Eddie persists, Spenser embarrasses the bully by smacking him around and then finally hits him hard in the gut.

In all three instances, Cole, Stone, and Spenser are calm and act only when pushed to do so. These three scenarios are so profoundly similar that with the exception of minor details they are nearly indistinguishable. This is true not only on a manifest level, but on a deeper, fundamental level. You have women—a whore, a divorcee, a housewife who sleeps around—who act or have acted in some questionable ways and made some terrible choices, but who Parker’s protagonists defend with acts of reluctant violence. It is the nature of these scenarios that bears some analysis. Why are the dynamics of scenes like these so pivotal to Parker’s novels? Also note that all three examples take place in the early sections of their respective books in order to establish the nature of the protagonists.

First, let’s look at the players: the bad guy, the imperiled woman, and the hero. You can’t have a hero without a bad guy, but bullies are a particular kind of bad guy and Parker’s bullies are a particular breed of bully. They are all big men with big mouths who flaunt their disrespect for authority and the law. The accepted wisdom is that bullies are actually scared weaklings who pick only on those they are certain they can dominate.

So why bullies? They are convenient villains: easy to write, easy for the reader to root against, easy to hate. There are some sexy, loveable, charming, even sympathetic bad guys in the annals of fiction, but there’s nary a bully among them.
Think of
Silence of the Lambs
. Who was the most detestable person in the movie? Hannibal Lecter? Buffalo Bill? No, it’s Dr. Chilton. Why? Chilton is a petty, insecure bully who taunts Lecter and interferes with Starling’s investigation. It’s easier to love a serial killer than a bully.

Parker’s bullies are also particular in their prey: women. In his choice of women to put in peril, Parker selects a specific kind of woman, a fallen woman. While it is clear the prostitute and the cheating wife fit into this category, it may not be obvious in the case of the divorcee, but through the course of
Night Passage
we find she never finished high school, isn’t the most diligent mother, and isn’t much motivated to change—so while she is not a fallen woman in the traditional sense, she’s still morally ambiguous.

The motivation behind Parker’s choices of women in peril is a little more complicated, however. I believe he chooses these fallen women because defending them and their honor says more about their defenders than it says about the women themselves. It’s as if Parker is saying that any man would defend a beautiful virtuous woman, but that it takes a special breed of man—a man who lives by a strict code of right and wrong—to rise to the defense of these women. Can someone say Don Quixote?

Deus ex machina
—god from the machine—is a term derived from the tradition of Greek tragedy in which the playwright resorts to using a trick to get himself out of a seemingly insolvable plot conflict. It refers both to the physical equipment—a crane or riser—used to deliver the actor playing the god to the stage and to the god him or herself. In short, the
use of a
deus ex machina
is cheating the reader or the audience. It’s the clue no one knew about or the character who swoops in at the last minute to resolve all the seemingly inexplicable plot conflicts.

Psycho ex machina
is a phrase I coined several years ago to describe what I felt was a disturbing trend in the PI subgenre. I use it to refer to the sidekick who does the dirty work so that our protagonist can remain pure of heart and true to his code. I suppose this was an inevitable development as the PI novel evolved to reflect the society and culture at large. Would we find Easy Rawlins as likeable or as sympathetic a protagonist if he had to do the violence and murdering—some warranted, some not—that Walter Mosley has Mouse do? Would Matt Scudder be quite as appealing if there was no Mick Ballou, bloodied butcher’s apron and all, for Scudder to turn to in a tough spot? If Sherlock Holmes were in a fix and needed certain crucial information to save a client’s life, the current convention would have Dr. Watson torturing the person from whom Holmes needed the information. The most recent incarnation of the
psycho ex machina
is the genius computer hacker friend and ally that every modern PI seems to know. One might argue that Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larson’s Millennium series is Mikael Blomkvist’s
psycho ex machina
.

Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series features Hawk, perhaps the most famous of all
psychos ex machina
. Hawk, introduced in
Promised Land
, is an African-American leg-breaker for a local crime boss named King Powers. Hawk and Spenser have known each other for years and share a professional respect, but they are by no means friends. Only after Hawk is sent after Spenser by King, and Hawk refuses to kill him, do Hawk and Spenser form a lasting alliance. Although Parker has Spenser describe himself as “a professional thug,” it is
actually Hawk who is often given the dirty jobs to do. Both Hawk and Spenser live by their individual codes, but Hawk’s code is grounded more heavily in street morality than the code of the knight-errant. Parker intended Hawk to be the yang to Spenser’s yin, literally the black reflection of Spenser, and only a fool would argue that this wasn’t a very fortunate choice. If writing is about making choices, this was one of Parker’s best in terms of making the series a great success.

However, the underlying reasons for this yin/yang of Spenser and Hawk has probably less to do with sudden inspiration than with Parker’s abiding attachment to the tradition of the Chandlerian detective adjusting to the graying moral standards in the latter stages of the twentieth century. In other words, it would be impossible for Spenser—a happier, more fulfilled, better-fed version of Philip Marlowe—to keep to his code of ethics intact when encountering the cases he was apt to take on during the times in which the series played out. I believe Parker made a calculated and practical choice with Spenser and Hawk, much in the same way he did when setting up his bad guy/imperiled woman/hero confrontations.

And though it is difficult to bicker with success, I would argue that while the use of the
psycho ex machina
, Hawk in this instance, insulates Spenser, the hero-protagonist, from heart-wrenching or even impossible moral choices and allows him to remain true to his ethical code, it, like a governor on a truck engine, robs some of the potential energy from the series. This may be a further contributing factor to the creation of Jesse Stone. While it’s true that Spenser is a more “complete” person than Stone and is, unlike Stone, capable of carrying on a healthy long-term romance, and is quick to quote poetry or recommend a restaurant or good wine, I believe Stone is the type of man who would chafe at the
prospect of a continuing relationship with a Hawk-like character. And, frankly, that makes Stone a more appealing character to me.

Stone and Spenser both may have started out as cops—Stone as an LAPD homicide detective and Spenser an investigator for the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, DA’s office—but from there their career paths diverge. Spenser strikes out on his own, whereas Stone loses his way and his job. As discussed earlier, Stone lands the chief of police job in Paradise, Massachusetts. The nature of Stone’s job would make a continuing relationship with a
psycho ex machina
very problematic but, beyond the constraints of his office, Stone is very much a man unto himself. I can’t see Jesse Stone, for all of his relationship woes and problems with drink, in need of a dark reflection or a negative image for dramatic purposes. For one thing, his own dark side is very much on display for the world to see. He does, after all, work in a small town, and it’s not like Stone’s issues are buried very deep. At most, Stone might have a continuing relationship with someone like Hawk as an informant, though I couldn’t see Hawk in that role.

None of this is to say that Stone wouldn’t be tempted, depending upon the situation, to make an alliance with a Hawk-like character if it were in the service of justice. Nor is it to say that Parker did not introduce Hawk-like characters into the Stone series to shake up Jesse’s world. In
Stranger in Paradise
, Jesse Stone is confronted by the Apache hit man Wilson “Crow” Cromartie. Cromartie was last seen in Paradise ten years earlier as a member of a robbery crew that had pulled off a huge heist at a wealthy island enclave. Not only has the statute of limitations expired on his crimes, but the women who were being held hostage during the commission of the robbery hail Crow as a hero, as the man who saved their lives while they were vulnerable and at risk.

Stranger in Paradise
opens with Crow walking into Jesse Stone’s office and announcing his presence in Paradise. This would seem an odd course of action even given that the statute of limitations had expired on Crow’s alleged crimes, but of course there is a less obvious purpose for his coming to see Stone. Crow, who clearly respects Stone, is showing his respect by alerting him. He understands Stone has his job to do, but so does Crow. Crow is also indirectly asking Stone to help him do his job by staying out of his way. Interesting, given that Crow is basically a professional assassin, and Stone and his department try valiantly throughout the course of the novel to put together a case against Crow that will stand up in court.

Yet the respect between the two men is apparently mutual. Parker never wants us to lose sight of the fact that Crow and Stone share important qualities. Molly, one of Stone’s cops, compares the two men:

“He’s [Crow] is a little like you, Jesse . . . You have the same silent center. Nothing will make you turn aside. Nothing will make you back up. It’s . . . what do shrinks call it . . .?”

“Autonomy,” Jesse said.

“Yes. Both of you are, like, autonomous,” Molly said. “Except maybe you have scruples.”

“Maybe he does, too,” Jesse said.

Parker is very shrewd here in the way he peels away the onion skin for the reader. Notice that Molly, who through the course of the series is often Stone’s truth-teller and sounding board, uses the word “maybe” when assessing Stone’s moral compass.
Maybe
Jesse has scruples. That is a very telling statement. Jesse is so individualistic that his
foibles are more evident to those who surround him than his values. Can you see the people surrounding Spenser having similar doubts about his scruples or lack thereof? And then to have Stone recognize a kindred spirit in Crow by using the same language to assess the killer is pretty amazing. Although Parker doesn’t describe Stone’s voice or his expression as he says, “Maybe he does, too,” I cannot help but see and hear Stone as wistful. This is heady stuff and once again shows how fine a writer Parker was. He drops a bomb on the reader, but not by shining neon lights and announcing, “Here it comes!” Rather, he reveals his character’s inner workings subtly, in a quiet moment of casual conversation. Wistful or not, kindred spirit or not, Jesse Stone is not destined to have a long-term relationship with Crow, at least not one in which Crow takes the tough moral choices out of Jesse’s hands on a regular basis.

It is said that many authors rewrite the same book over and over again. While that is too broad and simplistic a statement, there is the ring of truth about it. I do think the nature of writing is the investigation of haunting questions. Different writers are haunted by different questions, and their works are often defined by how they ask those questions of themselves and how they choose to explore those questions through setting, plot, theme, and character. Very rarely do we find satisfactory answers by asking the question once, in a single form, and exploring it in only one way. It wouldn’t be a very haunting question if it could be answered so easily.

Think here of Michael Crichton. It would not be hyperbole, I think, to say that Dr. Crichton was obsessed with the
notion of humankind’s insignificance in the face of nature and the belief that humankind’s hubris and lack of respect in tinkering with the natural order of things leads inevitably to disastrous results. In other words, to quote an old TV commercial, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” Crichton explored this notion again and again in novel after novel.

The Andromeda Strain
: A space probe sent to capture samples of alien life forms—possibly to be used as biological weapons—returns to Earth carrying a microbe that threatens to destroy all life on Earth.

The Terminal Man
: A man given to violent fits due to a brain disorder receives surgery that implants a computer in his brain. The computer, meant to alleviate his violent symptoms, actually leads to him being more violent than before the surgery.

Jurassic Park
: Scientists discover a way to reconstitute the DNA of long-extinct dinosaurs and bring them back to life. A wealthy man creates an amusement park populated with dinosaurs, including predatory ones, and all hell breaks loose.