| BRENDAN DUBOIS |
DURING THE BENIGHTED years of the early 1970s, a time of gas lines, a constitutional crisis, disco, and polyester leisure suits, most enthusiasts and observers of the mystery field generally accepted that the private eye novel, if not dead, was at least on life support, fading as fast as a snowflake on a hot stove. The idea of an armed man seeking justice on his own, using his fists and his intelligence, seemed out of time and place during an era when America was in decline and in retreat, when the presidency itself was under siege.
By its very nature, the private eye novel depended on a main character of honor, skills, and fortitude to carry the narrative. But in the troubled times of the 1970s, when the country seemed impotent, where questions of competence and truthfulness were directed to the very foundations of American society and government, was there really a literary PI hero out there who readers could possibly identify with?
The answer was yes, and what an answer it turned out to be.
It came from a relatively unknown college professor from Northeastern University, who published his first novel in 1973 featuring a one-named private investigator: Spenser. The first few paragraphs of that novel seemed to indicate that a new version of the smart, wisecracking private eye was making its debut.
From page one, chapter one, of The Godwulf Manuscript:
The office of the university president looked like the front parlor of a successful Victorian whorehouse. It was paneled in big squares of dark walnut, with ornately figured maroon drapes at the long windows. There was maroon carpeting and the furniture was black leather with brass studs. The office was much nicer than the classrooms; maybe I should have worn a tie.
From these few sentences, it seemed a worthy successor had been found to a noble lineage that included such usual suspects as Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, and Travis McGee. Quiet, hard, determined men who not only walked down mean streets, but owned them and didn’t flinch from violence. Firearms and cheap drinks, diner and restaurant food defended and sustained them, while the women in their lives, for the most part, were babes, dames, or broads. Their bleak lives were filled with yearnings and past desires, tainted with dark cynicism about the world about them.
Increasingly enthusiastic readers and reviewers learned Spenser was as quick with his fists as with a quip as he worked the streets and alleyways of Boston. Standing just an inch over six feet, he weighed about two hundred pounds, was a Korean combat vet, a boxer, and then a Massachusetts state police officer. He worked out at a gym and usually ran five miles a day. His nose had been broken a few times. He often carried a firearm and, when things got out of hand and his life and those of others were in danger, he didn’t hesitate to use deadly force. While the bodies didn’t pile up in heaps as in many other detective novels, the use of deadly force was always an option for Spenser.
Spenser sounded cool. He sounded mean. He sounded sharp.
In the second book of what would later prove to be a forty-book series, God Save the Child, Spenser starts a monogamous relationship with psychologist Susan Silverman. He always flirted with women, but he always went back to Susan. No one-night stands for Spenser, no babes or hook-ups like his famous predecessors.
Okay, then. Maybe Spenser was just a bit different from that noble lineage.
Like many private detectives, he’d conduct surveillances from his car. For lunch during these surveillances, he’d pick up fresh Syrian bread, feta cheese, and a pound of kalamata olives.
Sure, why not. Other private investigators lived on sandwiches while doing stakeouts. What’s a little feta cheese among friends?
He loved to cook fine food, making meals such as pork medallions with rice and a pineapple-based cream sauce, or pasta with spiced oil and broccoli.
Um, hold on.
He drank beers such as Utica Club Cream Ale, Labatt 50, and Pilsner Urquell.
Huh?
He was proud that his name was identical to that of Edmund Spenser, the sixteenth-century English author of The Faerie Queene.
What. The. Hell?
Who was this guy, anyway?
It might have been easy to dismiss Spenser as a nut or a wimp, except a close reading of the novels show that he is anything but. He never backs down from outside pressure, is incredibly loyal to friends and associates, and is willing to expose himself to great danger to do what’s right.
But in addition to that traditional two-fisted, hardboiled private detective, there’s also the Spenser who not only tosses off literary references, but also enjoys gourmet cooking and has a healthy respect and admiration for women.
Good food and gourmet cooking is an integral part of Spenser’s life. In every Spenser novel, there’s either a cooking or a shopping lesson. In Playmates, after a dreary day of reviewing basketball game tapes with a friend who’s a sports expert to see if a star player is shaving points, Spenser returns home and thinks of his evening meal. Most private detectives, hell, most people, when driving home after a particularly rough day, head for the nearest drive-through, a frozen dinner, or their collection of Chinese take-out menus.
But not Spenser.
This is what he’s thinking:
I was playing a Matt Dennis tape in my car and planning supper. Fresh crabmeat, maybe, sautéed in olive oil and white wine with red and yellow and green peppers, and mushrooms, and served over rice. Or I could pound out some chicken thigh cutlets and marinate them in lemon juice and tarragon and a drop of virgin olive oil and cook them on my new Jenn-Air indoor grill. I could have a couple more beers while I waited for them to marinate, and I could eat them with some broccoli and maybe boiled red potatoes. I’d put a honey mustard dressing on the broccoli. Or maybe tortellini . . .
Leaving aside the fact of who the heck Matt Dennis is (okay, I know, I know, he was a famous jazz singer and writer and arranger; thank you, Google), can you imagine any kind of private detective thinking like that, besides Spenser?
Probably not. But Parker got away with it with Spenser. Because right from the very first books, it was clear that Spenser lived by his own rules and codes, and if he enjoyed cooking and fine food, by God, so what? Who would dare criticize or tease him? (Except for Hawk, of course, but Hawk inhabited a universe all his own.) But don’t get me wrong. Spenser wasn’t a snob. He just enjoyed fine food and good restaurants and interesting recipes.
In all of the Spenser novels, all the restaurants that Our Hero visited and enjoyed were described with such detail and affection that you knew that Bob Parker had tested them . . . performing what some would call literary research.
Nice work if you can get it, eh?
In fact, just a few miles from where I’m writing this, there’s a well-known restaurant in downtown North Conway, New Hampshire, called Horsefeathers. In Early Autumn, Spenser is driving from Massachusetts to Maine, bringing along a teenage boy, Paul Giacomin, who is caught in the middle of a custody fight between his parents. But even when on the road with a sullen teenager, Spenser still has time to eat:
We got to North Conway, New Hampshire, about one thirty in the afternoon. I stopped at a restaurant called Horse-feathers opposite the green in the center of town. There was a softball diamond on the green and some kids were playing a game without umpires.
I said, “Let’s eat.”
He said nothing, but got out of the car and went into the restaurant with me. We’d been in rural New England. Now we were in rural chic. North Conway is a major ski resort in winter, and summer homes abound around it in New Hampshire and across the border in Maine. Horsefeathers had brass and hanging plants and looked just like restaurants in San Francisco.
The food was good and at two twenty we were in the car again heading for Fryeburg.
What’s wonderful about this scene is that in a place of honor over the Horsefeathers’ bar to this day is an autographed copy of Early Autumn, a printed copy of the above excerpt, and a handwritten note from Bob Parker to the then-owner of the restaurant stating that he always had a good meal at Horsefeathers.
But why gourmet food? Why the recipes? Why the fascination with getting fresh ingredients for complicated meals? Why not—like so many of us, including other PIs—rely on frozen food, meals in a box, or take-out food?
My theory, as strange sounding as barbecued ice cream, I admit, is that Spenser’s love of fine food and cooking reflects on his professional life as a private investigator. Think clues, and then think ingredients. For what does an investigator do but look at, evaluate, and review the key ingredients to a solution, not unlike what a chef does when looking at possible ingredients for a fine meal? The ingredients are pondered, combined with other factors, and are pondered and tested yet again, all while looking to the ultimate pay-off of a grand solution to a crime—or an award-winning recipe for a special gourmet meal.
So consider again Spenser’s interest in fine food. Look again at that earlier scene in Playmates, where he’s going through the list of options of what he might have for dinner. Perhaps that’s also the template Spenser uses when he’s considering what he’s learned about a crime, juggling different aspects of a case, looking for that perfect solution versus that perfect meal.
Then there is Spenser’s unorthodox approach toward the women in his life, or, more accurately, the woman. Spenser also has a healthy interest in fine women, especially one fine woman, Susan Silverman. Save for the first novel in the forty-book series, Spenser and Susan are together, one way or another, in every one.
Why is that?
Why Susan Silverman?
Or to be a bit more general, why a steady and monogamous relationship? What does it gain a private investigator and a loner like Spenser? Most other PIs we’ve known and loved other the years did quite well without the proverbial “ball and chain.” Women came and went depending on the character and depending on the story. They played a supporting role, serving the needs of the plot and the more, ahem, basic needs of the male private investigator.
When it’s Spenser and women, it’s time for another theory.
Remember that what brings all private investigators together is that code of honor and the need to walk down those mean streets to seek justice, to seek a solution. Those streets can be dark, they can be forbidding, but they can also be enticing, seductive, and romantic in a twisted way. Recall Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness, which portrays with great skill the pure seductiveness of an evil place with no limits. Shadowy places that are not only acknowledged but explored by the strangers who come there to seek money and fame, among other things. There are literally no rules, and anything is permissible.
From Heart of Darkness: “He declared he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased.”
Ah, yes, “the horror! the horror!”
So what can bring a man (or woman) back from those evil, seductive mean streets, that heart of darkness, to a place of safety and what passes for normal life?
An anchor, a soul mate, someone to whom you can return and confess all, without being judged, without being criticized. After you’ve seen men fall and die because of you, when you have the stench of spilled blood and burnt gunpowder on your hands, it’s a wise and wonderful thing to have an understanding woman at your side.
Spenser loves women, appreciates women, and admires women. But never does he see them as objects or things or lesser than himself.
So. Cooking and feminism. Not the usual attributes that pop into mind when one thinks of private investigators. How did this all happen?
The blame, of course, should be assigned to the author. Take a look at the book jacket photos for Parker and his Spenser series, especially the early ones. You see a dark-haired man, with a moustache and piercing eyes, giving out a fierce “don’t bleep with me” look. Bob had a lot of similarities with Spenser: Korean veterans, weightlifters, runners, and lovers of special women: in Bob’s case, his wife Joan. But still, he looked like someone you didn’t want to approach suddenly, or in a dark alley.
After I started my career in writing mystery fiction, I did eventually meet Parker, at Kate Mattes’ famous mystery bookstore in Cambridge (where he had helped build the bookshelves), and I found him in a corner with a group of fans and fellow authors. He was built like a fireplug, looked strong and confident, but one other thing was quite apparent.
He was a big teddy bear!
Those dark, piercing eyes . . . when he was laughing and joking (a very common occurrence), those eyes would narrow as his elfin-cheeks rolled up and his moustache would twitch with delight. He was self-deprecating, poking fun at himself and his career, and he would gladly sign autographs for anyone who approached him. To someone who was just starting out in the field, Bob was gracious, treating me like a fellow professional. He had the bulk of a weightlifter, but he also had the bulk of a man who enjoyed fine food and fine beers.
There’s an old saying about an attractive male, “that all men want be like him, and all women want to be with him.”
That was Bob Parker. And that is also Spenser.
And the women . . . they do find Spenser so very attractive. But though Spenser is flirtatious and enjoys their attention, Susan is always, always nearby, either in his mind or in his apartment. There’s a funny bit that’s played and replayed in Playmates, where Spenser makes it a point to leave his office door open so he can see the beautiful paralegal from a nearby office walk by in the hallway. Sometimes he’s lucky, but other times he has visitors and the door is closed, meaning all he hears is the click-click of her heels as she walks by. During those moments, he sighs at the apparent injustice of it all. One afternoon Hawk comes by and Spenser finds himself irritated to see Hawk in the lawyer’s office, flirting with the paralegal. He even tries phoning the paralegal to warn her off from Hawk, to no effect.
This goes on for most of Playmates and then is gently and neatly wrapped up when he meets up with Susan for dinner and a lovemaking session. Afterward, this is what happens:
We lay like that for a bit, quietly. Then Susan rolled away from me and sat up without using her hands and got out of bed and walked across to the bedroom closet, where she kept a robe. Eat your heart out, Paralegal.
Romantic, yes, and incredibly corny. But that is Spenser. He is dedicated to one woman, a keystone throughout the entire series, even during that brief time when Spenser and Susan are separated.
But there is one woman early in Spenser’s career who definitely isn’t impressed with him, or attracted to him, or who initially wants anything to do with him. That woman is Rachel Wallace, from Parker’s sixth novel, Looking for Rachel Wallace. She’s a feminist lesbian author with a new book coming out who’s been subject to a number of death threats.
It is quite the pairing. I can’t quite imagine how Mike Hammer would react to protecting a feminist lesbian, and there is certainly a lot of opportunity for Spenser and his soon-to-be client to be at odds.
(An aside: Re-reading Looking for Rachel Wallace, just over thirty years after its publication, is an amazing lesson on how much has changed over the years. The key plot point in the book is the homophobic and ignorant reactions Rachel Wallace gets from characters throughout the novel, just because she’s a public figure who proudly informs the world she is a lesbian. Now, Massachusetts, the home turf of Spenser, has an openly gay congressman, a gay Supreme Judicial Court justice and, along with New York State and my own conservative state of New Hampshire, has gay marriage. I think Spenser would be pleased.)
When Spenser and Rachel Wallace meet, sparks fly, but not in the traditional romantic sense. Rachel grills Spenser as to his suitability of being her hired protector, especially when she learns that he has read an earlier book of hers. The discussion then turns to the French author and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, and Spenser begins to lose patience with his new client, asking her if there’s going to be a quiz later.
Rachel says, “I wish to get some insight into your attitude toward women and women’s issues.”
To which Spenser retorts, “That’s dumb. You ought to be getting insight into how well I can shoot and how hard I can hit and how quick I can dodge. That’s what somebody is giving me two hundred a day for. My attitude toward women is irrelevant. So are my insights into The Second Sex.”
Rachel Wallace finally agrees to let Spenser serve as her bodyguard, with strict instructions on how he should act and dress. As the book gets underway, there are a couple of cringe-worthy scenes for fellow authors as Rachel does bookstore and library appearances for her book, where she meets up with readers who either don’t know or don’t care about her and her work. Spenser watches her in action and, as Spenser does so very well, observes everything that’s going on. We also sense that Rachel is watching him back. It’s like two prizefighters of a sort, circling around, eyeing and evaluating each other.
At one point, Spenser brings Rachel along for a dinner date with Susan Silverman. While it’s no clash of the titans, there’s an interesting dynamic in seeing a radical feminist and a feminist who loves a certain man check each other out. During this process, Spenser being Spenser, tosses off various quips and one-liners as Rachel and Susan comment about Spenser, about radical feminism, about his penchant for violence. Hilarity definitely does not ensue, as Rachel takes offense. But Susan being Susan, she provides Rachel with an explanation for the way Spenser thinks and operates.
Speaking of Susan, Spenser says:
“Maybe I shouldn’t cart her around everyplace” . . .
“Machismo,” Rachel said. “The machismo code. He’s locked into it, and he can’t explain himself, or apologize, or cry probably, or show emotion.”
“I throw up good, though. And I will in a minute.”
Wallace’s head snapped around at me. Her face was harsh and tight. Susan patted her arm. “Give him time,” she said. “He grows on you. He’s hard to classify. But he’ll look out for you. And he’ll care what happens to you. And he’ll keep you out of harm’s way.” Susan sipped her wine. “He really will,” she said to Rachel Wallace.
“And you?” Rachel said, “does he look out for you?”
“We look out for each other,” Susan said. “I’m doing it now.”
Rachel Wallace smiled, her face loosened. “Yes,” she said. “You are, aren’t you?”
Confrontation avoided, or explained, but note what else is going on during this exchange. Rachel relaxes upon seeing Spenser and Susan dealing with each other as equals. Despite Rachel’s bluff talk of machismo, she recognizes the deep affection and bond that Susan and Spenser have for each other. Rachel’s clichés of how brutish Spenser is—he can’t explain himself, apologize, cry, or show emotion—crumble under the complex reality of who Spenser is, a reality indicated by his strong female companion.
The learning process for Rachel continues soon after this dinner. A Boston-based morning television show invites her to talk about her book, and the well-dressed, well-coiffed, and brainless woman interviewer doesn’t ask her any questions about her work. Instead, there are questions about lesbian marriage, whether lesbians should be allowed to teach children, and whether lesbians can be good role models for children.
When the interview is over—and in one last insult, a producer calls out, “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Wallace”—Spenser escorts her out of the television studio and drives away. Within a few minutes, the hard, tough, feminist, lesbian author begins sobbing.
When faced with something like this, a tough woman who starts crying after a rotten encounter with what passes for the news media, I’m not sure how some traditional PIs would react, but Spenser doesn’t hesitate:
I said, “Feel like a freak?”
She nodded.
“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.
“A freak,” she said. Her voice was a little thick and a little unsteady, but if you didn’t see the tears, you wouldn’t be sure she was crying. “Or a monster. That’s how everyone seems to us. Do you seduce little girls? Do you carry them off for strange lesbian rites? Do you use a dildo? God. God damn. Bastards.” Her shoulders began to shake harder.
I put my right hand out toward her with palm up. We passed the business school that way—me with my hand out, her with her body shaking. Then she put her left hand in my right. I held it hard.
“Don’t let them do that to you,” I said.
She squeezed back at me and we drove the rest of the way along the Charles like that—our hands quite rigidly clamped together, her body slowly quieting down.
What a wonderful scene that is. You have two characters, a macho male PI and a radical lesbian feminist, a recipe for conflict, for confrontation, for misunderstandings. But after Rachel’s disastrous interview focusing on her sexuality and nothing else, at a time when she is vulnerable in front of the rugged PI, the two characters are just two human beings. Period. Spenser does what he can to comfort her, and Rachel accepts the gesture.
Some macho, huh?
But it doesn’t get better for Spenser and Rachel Wallace. In fact, it gets worse. A third of the way through the novel, there is an incident where Rachel is attending a meeting of some women employees at an insurance firm in downtown Boston where, before the session even begins, the head of security for the firm arrives to prevent Rachel from talking to the employees. Spenser tells the company officials that if they touch Rachel or attempt to physically remove her, there will be consequences. But Rachel is insistent: “Spenser,” Rachel said. “I don’t want any of that. We will resist, but we will resist passively.”
By now, the astute reader knows that peaceful resistance is not part of Spenser’s vocabulary. The situation escalates. Two company officials grab Rachel and try to drag her from her chair. She goes limp, passively resisting, but Spenser cannot stand by as a passive onlooker. Threats are exchanged, punches are thrown, and the two men end up sprawled over a cafeteria counter.
Rachel looks to Spenser, says, “You stupid bastard,” and slaps him across the face. A few moments later, she says, “Back there you embodied everything I hate. Everything I have tried to prevent. Everything I have denounced—machismo, violence, that preening male arrogance that compels a man to defend any woman he’s with, regardless of her wishes and regardless of her need.”
Spenser is then fired, and when he later meets up with Susan Silverman, she listens carefully to what has gone on and quietly asks, “So why didn’t you keep out of it?”
Spenser replies by saying, “And stand there and let them drag her out?” to which Susan says, “Yes.”
Spenser’s response?
“No,” I said. “I couldn’t do that. Maybe I could have stood by, or maybe if there were a next time I could. But I couldn’t lie down and let them drag me out.”
To which Susan replies:
“No, You couldn’t. But you didn’t have to deprive Rachel of a chance for a triumph.”
This causes Spenser to pause, to reflect, and to realize that, in her own way, Rachel has her own sense of honor, her own sense of rules, as worthy as his own.
And what, exactly, drives Spenser? What are his rules? We learn it cleanly and clearly in Promised Land, where Spenser explains, “I try to be honorable. I know that’s embarrassing to hear. It’s embarrassing to say. But I believe most of the nonsense that Thoreau was preaching. And I have spent a long time working on getting myself to where I could do it. Where I could live life largely on my own terms.”
Following the incident in the company cafeteria is the point in the novel where Spenser realizes that, like him, Rachel Wallace is living life largely on her terms, and he respects that, even though she has slapped him and dismissed him as her bodyguard. They are both honorable people, though from vastly different backgrounds and with different definitions of honor.
When Rachel is kidnapped, even though he is no longer officially responsible for her, even though he is no longer her bodyguard, as a man of honor Spenser is compelled to search for her. Like the old knights of yore seeking to rescue a maiden in distress, once Spenser has a good idea of her location, he goes to find her.
Oh, by the way, he goes alone.
With no backup.
On foot, after a blizzard has crippled traffic and trains in Massachusetts, with the whole commonwealth under a state of emergency.
That’s Spenser.
Rachel Wallace is successfully located and Spenser kills two men during the rescue and, even then, Rachel will remain true to her own sense of honor.
From the conclusion of Looking for Rachel Wallace, there’s a brief exchange between Spenser and Rachel, after he has rescued her from the kidnappers:
Rachel drank some more bourbon. “What I am trying to do,” she said, “is to thank you. And to say it as genuinely as I can. And I do thank you. I will remember as long as I live when you came into the room and got me, and I will always remember when you killed them, and I was glad, and you came and we put our arms around each other. And I will always remember that you cried.”
“What’ll you charge not to tell?” I said. “Makes a mess of my image.”
She went on without pausing. “And I shall in a way always love you for those moments.” Her glass was empty. I filled it. “But I am a lesbian and a feminist. You still embody much that I must continue to disparage.” She had trouble with disparage. “I still disapprove of you.”
“Rachel,” I said, “how could I respect anyone who didn’t disapprove of me?”
A pretty open-minded and thoughtful response.
So where did Spenser get his enlightened attitude toward women? One would think that he grew up in an urban household with lots of women, or a strong mom, or a strong aunt. And one would be wrong. Spenser was born in Laramie, Wyoming, and his mom died in childbirth. He was raised by his dad and his two uncles—all carpenters—and then moved with his family to Boston at a young age, where he got a football scholarship at Holy Cross.
The womanly influence, then . . . where did it come from?
From his creator, of course.
My wife, Mona, an avid reader of mysteries herself, likes to think that Parker grew to appreciate strong, independent women when he attended Colby College in Maine, my wife’s alma mater and a known incubator of strong, smart women, like the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Maybe so. But here’s Parker himself, talking about his (and no doubt Spenser’s) view of women:
I have known an interesting, sexy, independent woman for some 50 years and have had many opportunities to observe her in many different situations. And one of the many things I have learned during the course of our relationship is that ultimately the things that separate women from men are less significant than the things that we have in common with each other.
What a great yet simple explanation of why Spenser was Spenser. Seeing women as equals, as partners to enjoy and cherish along life’s bumpy path.
And along the way, if you drank some Pilsner Urquell along with fresh crabmeat, sautéed in olive oil and white wine with red and yellow and green peppers, with mushrooms, and served over rice, well, that just makes it much more memorable.
Just like Spenser.