These foolish things remind me of you

Randi Kreiss

"The name is Spenser, with an ‘s’, like the poet.”

That’s how the detective introduced himself. The creation of author Robert B. Parker, Spenser (no first name) is featured in 37 novels, about half of them written by the prolific Cambridge-based writer.

I’ve been half in love with Spenser since Parker introduced him 37 years ago. And I suppose I’ve been half in love with Robert Parker, too, although I know it’s unwise to confuse an author with his work.

Still, there are similarities.

Parker updated and reinvented the hard-boiled detective. His guy, Spenser, not only loves women, knows a babe when he sees a babe, but also respects women. You get that not from anything the author says about him, but from the way Spenser treats his girlfriend, Susan Silverman, a Jewish therapist who lives near him in Cambridge.

They never marry in the books, and sometimes the relationship gets rocky, but the witty verbal interplay and passion in the clinches elevate the relationship from the Raymond Chandler version of Bogey and Bacall blowing cigarette smoke in each other’s faces.

Robert Parker died last week at the age of 77. I think he would think it was a good death, as deaths go. He was sitting at his desk writing when he had a fatal heart attack. He was found by his wife of 54 years, Joan Parker. They went through some tough times, too, but he dedicated every book to her.

Parker was a writer’s writer. Author Harlan Coban said, “Ninety percent of us acknowledge that we borrow from Parker. The other 10 percent lies.”

Parker had a Ph.D. from Boston University in English literature and was a full professor at Northwestern. He retired from academia only when he could make a living at writing. The Parkers have two gay sons; some reviewers observe that the author quite naturally embraces diversity in his stories, another departure from the detective novels of the ’40s.