Some of you might be fans...

January 20, 2010
Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead at 77
By BRUCE WEBER
NY Times

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a
tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40
novels, died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

The cause was a heart attack, said his agent of 37 years, Helen Brann.
She said that Mr. Parker had been thought to be in splendid health, and
that he died at his desk, working on a book. He wrote five pages a day,
every day but Sunday, she said.

Mr. Parker wrote more than 60 books all told, including westerns and
young-adult novels, but he churned out entertaining detective stories
with a remarkable alacrity that made him one of the country’s most
popular writers. In recent years he had come up with two new
protagonists: Jesse Stone, an alcoholic ex-ballplayer turned small-town
chief of police, who was featured in nine novels written since 1997,
including “Split Image,” to be published next month; and Sunny Randall,
a fashion-conscious, unlucky-in-love, daughter-of-a-cop private eye
created at the request of the actress Helen Hunt, who was hoping for a
juicy movie role. No movie was made, but the first Sunny Randall novel,
“Family Honor,” was published in 1999, and five more have followed.

It was Spenser, though — spelled “like the poet,” as the character was
wont to point out (his first name was never revealed) — who was Mr.
Parker’s signature creation. He appeared for the first time in 1973 in
“The Godwulf Manuscript,” in which he is hired by a university to
retrieve a stolen medieval document, an investigation that triggers a
murder. The first pages of the book revealed much of what readers came
to love about Spenser — his impatience with pomposity, his smart-alecky
wit, his self-awareness and supreme self-confidence.

“Look, Dr. Forbes,” Spenser says to the long-winded college president
who is hiring him. “I went to college once. I don’t wear my hat indoors.
And if a clue comes along and bites me on the ankle, I grab it. I am
not, however, an Oxford don. I am a private detective. Is there
something you’d like me to detect, or are you just polishing up your
elocution for next year’s commencement?”

A conscious throwback to hard-boiled detectives like Raymond Chandler’s
Philip Marlowe, but with a sensitivity born of the age of feminism and
civil rights, Spenser is a bruiser in body but a softie at heart,
someone who never shies from danger or walks away from a threat to the
innocent. Mr. Parker gave him many of his own traits. Spenser is an
admirer of any kind of expertise. He believes in psychotherapy. He’s a
great cook. He’s a boxer, a weightlifter and a jogger, a consumer of
doughnuts and coffee, a privately indulgent appreciator (from a
distance) of pretty women, a Red Sox fan, a dog lover. (Mr. Parker owned
a series of short-haired pointers, all named Pearl, like their fictional
incarnation.)

Most crucially, Spenser is faithful in love (to his longtime companion,
Susan Silverman, a psychologist) and in friendship (to his frequent
partner in anti-crime, a dazzlingly charming, morally idiosyncratic
black man named Hawk). And usually with the two of them as seconds, he
has remained indomitable, vanquishing crime bosses, drug dealers, sex
fiends, cold-blooded killers, corrupt politicians and several other
varieties of villain.

Mr. Parker wrote the Spenser novels in the first person, employing the
blunt, masculine prose style that is often described as Hemingwayesque.
But his writing also seems self-aware, even tongue-in-cheek, as though
he recognized how well worn such a path was. And his dialogue was
especially arch, giving Spenser an air of someone who takes very few
things seriously and raises an eyebrow at everything else. Mr. Parker’s
regular readers became familiar with the things that provoke Spenser’s
suspicion: showy glamour, ostentatious wealth, self-aggrandizement, fern
bars, fancy sports clubs and any kind of haughtiness or presumption.

Spenser is, in other words, what Marlowe might have been in a more
modern world (and living in Boston rather than Los Angeles).
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Parker considered Chandler one of the great American
writers of the 20th century. (He audaciously finished an incomplete
Chandler manuscript, “Poodle Springs”). And he has been often cited by
critics and other mystery writers as the guy who sprung the
Chandleresque detective free from the age of noir.

“I read Parker’s Spenser series in college,” the best-selling writer
Harlan Coben said in a 2007 interview with The Atlantic Monthly. “When
it comes to detective novels, 90 percent of us admit he’s an influence,
and the rest of us lie about it.”

Robert Brown Parker was a large man of large appetites that were
nonetheless satisfied with relative ease. He was as unpretentious and
self-aware as Spenser, his agent, Ms. Brann said.

“All he needed to be happy was his family and writing,” she said. “There
were always wonderful things in his refrigerator. People were always
after him to do cookbooks.” She paused.

“He loved doughnuts,” she said.

He was born in Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 17, 1932, the only child of
working-class parents. His father worked for the telephone company. He
attended Colby College in Maine, graduating in 1954, then served in the
Army in Korea, after the Korean War. He earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in
literature from Boston University, and taught there as well as at
Northeastern University.

His novels were adapted many times for television and the movies. From
1985 to 1988 Spenser appeared as the central character of a television
series, “Spenser: For Hire,” starring Robert Urich. The Jesse Stone
series was the inspiration for seven television movies starring Tom
Selleck, including one to be broadcast in the spring. “Appaloosa,” a
western starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen made from Mr. Parker’s
novel of the same name, was released in 2008.

Mr. Parker’s editor, Chris Pepe, said that in addition to the new Jesse
Stone novel, Putnam would publish a new western by Mr. Parker in the
spring; two additional Spenser novels are in production but unscheduled,
she said.

Mr. Parker first met his wife, Joan, at a birthday party when they were
3 years old, or so the story goes; in any case, they encountered each
other at Colby and married in 1956. Much of the relationship between
Spenser and Susan — including a period of trouble when they are apart —
reflects Mr. Parker’s with his wife. She survives him, as do two sons,
David, of Manhattan, and Daniel, of Los Angeles.

Most of his books were dedicated to his wife.

"Harry" wrote in message
m...

Some of you might be fans...

January 20, 2010
Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead at 77
By BRUCE WEBER
NY Times

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a
tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels,
died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

snip...

Too bad. We always watched the Spenser for Hire tv series starring the late
Robert Urich.
The Jessie Stone movies are/were shot up here...so lots of good work for
local actors & production crews.
I haven't run into Tom Selleck yet, but I bet he'd be a great guy to go for
a sail with.

Don White wrote:
"Harry" wrote in message
m...
Some of you might be fans...

January 20, 2010
Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead at 77
By BRUCE WEBER
NY Times

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a
tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels,
died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

snip...

Too bad. We always watched the Spenser for Hire tv series starring the late
Robert Urich.
The Jessie Stone movies are/were shot up here...so lots of good work for
local actors & production crews.
I haven't run into Tom Selleck yet, but I bet he'd be a great guy to go for
a sail with.




I liked Spenser for Hire, too. I especially liked "Hawk."

Harry wrote:
Don White wrote:
"Harry" wrote in message
m...
Some of you might be fans...

January 20, 2010
Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead
at 77
By BRUCE WEBER
NY Times

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created
Spenser, a tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of
nearly 40 novels, died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was
77.

snip...

Too bad. We always watched the Spenser for Hire tv series starring
the late Robert Urich.
The Jessie Stone movies are/were shot up here...so lots of good work
for local actors & production crews.
I haven't run into Tom Selleck yet, but I bet he'd be a great guy to
go for a sail with.



I liked Spenser for Hire, too. I especially liked "Hawk."
Start a bulletin board. This isn't the place for your tea party.