Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Goodbye, Spenser

It's almost a day after I learned that a good friend of mine has died, and I'm still in shock. The fact that I've met this friend face-to-face just once in my life -- about 5 years ago -- is immaterial. I feel like I've known Robert B. Parker for years.

Parker was best known as the creator of the Spenser detective novels, centered around a tough Boston P.I. Robert Urich played the character in a short-lived TV series back in the '80s. Parker also created the character of Police Chief Jesse Stone, capably played by Tom Selleck in a recent series of TV movies. In addition, Parker created a series with a strong female lead, Boston P.I. Sunny Randall, as well as a recent string of westerns featuring the pairing of guns-for-hire Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. The first of these, Appaloosa, was made into an excellent film starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.

Parker was credited by many of his fellow writers as single-handedly saving the "hard-boiled" detective genre in the '70s when he created Spenser. His writing style was terse, direct, yet surprisingly witty, never more so than when Spenser would trade barbs with his friend Hawk, or repartee with his lady love, Susan Silverman. I've read so many Spenser novels that I've lost track of them all, but thanks to Parker's prolific output -- he averaged three or four books a year for many years -- I could always count on another title just around the next corner.

Several years ago, Parker appeared at the White Marsh Barnes & Noble for a book signing, and I attended. It gave me a chance to meet a real live "famous" author, and while Parker was never on the order of a Dan Brown or Stephen King, he was one of my favorites. That day I got him to sign his latest hardcover, a Sunny Randall novel, I got his publicist to take a picture of us together, and I asked him some questions, most of which I can no longer remember. However, I do remember one comment he made, a rather eerie one given today's context. He said that he worked so far ahead that he could die tomorrow and his publisher would have at least four books ready to go into print. Sure enough, the publisher noted today that a new Jesse Stone novel will be published next month, and several more books, including a few more Spenser novels, are "in the pipeline."

I plan to savor each and every one of them, one page at a time.

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