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Pages: Books, Books & More Books....

I Wish I'd Written That
Gabrielle Lord on Jaws by Peter Benchley

 
THE SAD DECLINE OF ROBERT B. PARKER  
 

Parker's preparation for a career as a writer of hard-boiled detective novels could scarcely have been better. He served in the army, worked in the insurance business and in advertising before becoming a university teacher. His PhD dissertation was a study of the work of Dashiel Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald.

His character, the Boston PI Spenser, who first appeared in The Godwulf Manuscript in 1973, is a direct descendant of Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. Parker makes no bones about this, admitting that the naming of the character is a piece of homage to Chandler. Chandler's original name for Marlowe was Malory, after the fifteenth century poet; hence Spenser after the sixteenth century poet.

The first six Spenser books, down to and including Looking for Rachel Wallace, were extremely good. The plots were lean and pacy, the characters and settings well-drawn and the `themes' - drugs, sports, teenagers, feminism etc. - were deftly handled. Above all, Parker showed himself to be a master of witty dialogue, specifically the one-liner. In Looking for Rachel Wallace, after Hawk, the fearsome black enforcer, tells Spenser about his romance with an Ivy League philosophy professor, Spenser responds with: `How'd you get along with her seeing-eye dog?' In The Judas Goat, Spenser, in London, gets the drop on a would-be hit man.

Without letting go of his coat I took the gun out from under my arm with my right hand and pressed it into the hollow behind his ear. "England swings," I said, "like a pendulum do."

I corresponded with Parker in the early 80s expressing my admiration for the books and outlining my own ambitions. He was supportive and his rapid output - he was publishing one novel per year - encouraged me to try to do the same. At that time he was optimistic about a TV deal that was in the works with Roy Schneider slated to play Spenser. That would have been a good choice.

I met Parker at the San Francisco Boucheron in 1982. Brawny and forceful, he was a great act. He pretended to have trouble getting the top off a Budweiser bottle and lamented the damage to his image. He told the audience of admitting to his wife that he wanted to resign his academic job and concentrate on writing.

`Why?' she said. `You're a full professor with no administrative duties. All you have to do is take a Thursday seminar on the novel of action and violence.

`I know,' Parker said. `But every Thursday!'

Anyone who has ever hated teaching would know the feeling.

The fourth book, Promised Land, won the Edgar Allan Poe award for the best mystery novel of the year and the TV series was made with Robert Urich as Spenser and Avery Brooks as Hawk. Parker was credited as a consultant. The show wasn't bad - the Boston locations looked good and Urich was nicely cheeky and resilient. A very handsome dark actress played Susan Silverman with energy and charm. Brooks was terrific, so good that he sometimes stole the show and after `Spenser PI' folded went into his own show called `Hawk'. It was a failure.

By this time important changes had occurred in Parker's work. Susan Silverman, originally Spenser's part-time girlfriend, had moved to centre stage and was being rhapsodised often and at length. Her figure and face were as perfect as her mind was brilliant. She got a PhD and became a psychiatrist.

This development disfigured the books. Exchanges between Silverman and Spenser became embarrassingly smug and saccharine. It is hard to know why Parker moved in this direction. Perhaps he was trying to show that the PI need not be a `lone wolf', to destroy that stereotype. It might be that Parker was attempting to express his often-acknowledged love for his wife, Joan, through the writing. For whatever reason, the exercise was a failure. The relationship between Silverman and Spenser is simply unbelievable.

This would not matter - the Susan bits could be skipped - if Susan-worship had not begun to damage the plots. In A Catskill Eagle, Susan's kidnapping sends Spenser and Hawk on a coast-to-coast killing rampage reminiscent of Mike Hammer and Tiger Mann and similarly incredible.

An equally unfortunate change came over the relationship between Spenser and Hawk. Originally mutually respectful antagonists (they had fought professionally at the same time and worked out at the same gym), they drew closer so that in The Judas Goat Hawk is hired by Spenser as back-up. At this stage the relationship still has interesting tensions:

`I miss Susan,' I said.

`Can't blame you for that, man, she got one of the finest ass...'

I looked up.

Hawk said. `Cancel that, man. I sorry. That ain't your kind of talk about Susan. It ain't mine either. I forgot myself.'

I nodded.

But a few books later the relationship is as cloying as that with Susan and disturbingly similar. In the most recent Parker book I have read, Walking Shadow, Spenser dwells in detail on Hawk's stylish clothes and remarks on his 210 pound physique and `29 inch waist'. In turn, when Spenser comments that a man has requested him to stay away from his wife, Hawk responds with, `Who wouldn't?' In general, Spenser and Hawk indulge in mutually admiring banter that brings to mind Michael Mason's argument about the homosexuality encoded in Chandler's novels. (`Marlowe, Men and Women', in Miriam Gross, ed. The World of Raymond Chandler.)

It wouldn't matter if an underlying ambivalence in the relationship served some dramatic purpose, but it feels more like an attempt at depicting a cross-racial friendship that has somehow got out of control.

The other great weakness in the later novels could be described as accretions. In Early Autumn, Spenser made the acquaintance of Paul Giacomin, a disturbed teenager at the centre of the case he was involved in. Spenser rehabilitates Paul by teaching him carpentry and how to survive without TV and take-out. So far, so good, but Paul continues to be a presence in later books as a kind of surrogate son to Spenser and Susan. He is a ballet dancer and, of course, extraordinarily accomplished - the mutual admiration circle expands.

By far the worst accretion, and one I find impossible to understand, is Pearl, a dog Susan and Spenser acquired a few books back. They refer to it as `the baby' and occasionally share a bed with it. The dog is permitted to eat with them at the table and Susan kisses it on the muzzle. I was disgusted but Hawk was charmed. `Pearl don't like be called a dog,' he admonishes another character.

By Walking Shadow, Parker has entered a state best described as `terminal sentimentality'.

Last year I read a review in an English paper of a recent Parker novel. Formerly a great admirer, the reviewer suggested that the whole Spenser enterprise needed a re-think and I'm forced to agree. The wit is as sharp and the one-liners are as good as ever and we do not want to do without them. Parker is still clearly having fun. In Walking Shadow, Spenser accuses a playwright of plagiarism. When told it was an act of homage he says, `It always is.' In the same book Parker has a policeman named DeSpain who beats a man to death - exactly what a cop, also called DeSpain, does in Chandler's `Bay City Blues'.

That's fine, but Parker would do well to lose Susan, Paul and Pearl, contrive a serious falling-out between Spenser and Hawk and give Spenser a bad back or a limp, anything to make him less of an insufferably self-congratulatory Superman.