Enter Spenser

I'm probably a filthy dog but the content did not live up to my expectations, after reading the title.

/bows out

Were the later books better or worse than the earlier ones?

I read the whole serie several years, so I may have missed the last few. It was my opinion that the middle of the series was best. The first few weren't fully developed, and Parker didn't anything left for the the last ones; but the ones in the middle were good.

I may be biased, but I like the later novels more than the earlier ones. Spenser doesn't seem like Spenser to my until more than a dozen novels in.

I hate all of you. My reading list is already too long. x.x

I started with Looking for Rachel Wallace, at Mac's suggestion.

I've since gone back to the beginning. The latter novels are better.m but the first are clearly already special.

Parker was a really neat guy. I think we shall mourn his loss for a generation or three. I wish he had written the article he said he wanted to write about Edmund Spenser, the poet; it would have been interesting, and new.

Here's serendipity; having recently acquired a pretty full set of the Spenser books, which I hadn't previously read, I have spent the last three weeks working my way up to my current read: Hush Money, which I think is number 26?

I am enjoying them enormously, and think they are really quite consistent. The voice is there the whole way. There's progression as Parker adds recurring characters like Hawk, Paul Giacomin, Vinne Morris, Belson, Joe Broz, Lee Farrell, Chollo et al; Susan Silverman is the most significant addition in that she gives the books an extra dimension. All the progression seems natural, although I'd agree it's not until Promised Land that all the really important pieces are in place.

What's also very interesting is that it seems to me that I'm seeing Parker invent tropes that eventually became staples of the genre. Hawk - the stone killer who is devoted to the hero - crops up again and again in subsequent PI fiction: Robert Crais's Joe Pike, Dennis Lehane's Bubba, Harlan Coben's Win Lockwood. Actually I think Parker found the character so useful as a foil for Spenser that he basically gave us two more in Vinnie and Chollo. (You could also say Martin Quirk is a similar reflection of Spenser, just on the opposite side of the law to the other three.)

EDITED TO ADD: I'd be interested to know if actually Hawk has an earlier prototype. I don't see him in Chandler or Hammett but I have a bit of a blind spot in between. I don't think Travis McGee had a Hawkish pal, did he?

Torgo said:

EDITED TO ADD: I'd be interested to know if actually Hawk has an earlier prototype. I don't see him in Chandler or Hammett but I have a bit of a blind spot in between. I don't think Travis McGee had a Hawkish pal, did he?

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This is one of the things Parker wrote about in his dissertation; the knightly sidekick, he called it.

Medievalist said:

This is one of the things Parker wrote about in his dissertation; the knightly sidekick, he called it.

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That's very interesting - please would you point me in its direction? Is it published, at all?

Travis McGee had Meyer as a sidekick. He wasn't very Hawkish but he did provide a lot of sage advice.

Torgo said:

That's very interesting - please would you point me in its direction? Is it published, at all?

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No, it's not. You can request it from inter library loan, or buy a copy from UMI.

The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality. Robert B. Parker. Dissertation in Partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. in English. Boston University, 1971.

If you have access to a library with the ProQuest/UMI dissertation database you can order a copy.

You USED to be able to search the database online from the ProQuest/UMI Web site, and order a copy of any dissertation on file. I can't find a free search now on the site.