Robert B. Parker - "Spenser" Novelist - Has Died

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/books/20parker.html?ref=obituaries

The New York Times

January 20, 2010
Robert B. Parker, the Prolific Writer Who Created Spenser, Is Dead at 77
By BRUCE WEBER

Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a tough, glib Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels, died Monday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

The cause was a heart attack, said his agent of 37 years, Helen Brann. She said that Mr. Parker had been thought to be in splendid health, and that he died at his desk, working on a book. He wrote five pages a day, every day but Sunday, she said.

Mr. Parker wrote more than 60 books all told, including westerns and young-adult novels, but he churned out entertaining detective stories with a remarkable alacrity that made him one of the country’s most popular writers. In recent years he had come up with two new protagonists: Jesse Stone, an alcoholic ex-ballplayer turned small-town chief of police, who was featured in nine novels written since 1997, including “Split Image,” to be published next month; and Sunny Randall, a fashion-conscious, unlucky-in-love, daughter-of-a-cop private eye created at the request of the actress Helen Hunt, who was hoping for a juicy movie role. No movie was made, but the first Sunny Randall novel, “Family Honor,” was published in 1999, and five more have followed.

It was Spenser, though — spelled “like the poet,” as the character was wont to point out (his first name was never revealed) — who was Mr. Parker’s signature creation. He appeared for the first time in 1973 in “The Godwulf Manuscript,” in which he is hired by a university to retrieve a stolen medieval document, an investigation that triggers a murder. The first pages of the book revealed much of what readers came to love about Spenser — his impatience with pomposity, his smart-alecky wit, his self-awareness and supreme self-confidence.

“Look, Dr. Forbes,” Spenser says to the long-winded college president who is hiring him. “I went to college once. I don’t wear my hat indoors. And if a clue comes along and bites me on the ankle, I grab it. I am not, however, an Oxford don. I am a private detective. Is there something you’d like me to detect, or are you just polishing up your elocution for next year’s commencement?”

A conscious throwback to hard-boiled detectives like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, but with a sensitivity born of the age of feminism and civil rights, Spenser is a bruiser in body but a softie at heart, someone who never shies from danger or walks away from a threat to the innocent. Mr. Parker gave him many of his own traits. Spenser is an admirer of any kind of expertise. He believes in psychotherapy. He’s a great cook. He’s a boxer, a weightlifter and a jogger, a consumer of doughnuts and coffee, a privately indulgent appreciator (from a distance) of pretty women, a Red Sox fan, a dog lover. (Mr. Parker owned a series of short-haired pointers, all named Pearl, like their fictional incarnation.)

Most crucially, Spenser is faithful in love (to his longtime companion, Susan Silverman, a psychologist) and in friendship (to his frequent partner in anti-crime, a dazzlingly charming, morally idiosyncratic black man named Hawk). And usually with the two of them as seconds, he has remained indomitable, vanquishing crime bosses, drug dealers, sex fiends, cold-blooded killers, corrupt politicians and several other varieties of villain.

Continued...

http://www.theday.com/article/20100119/INTERACT010306/100119734

RIP Robert B. Parker: Crime Novelist as Virtuoso

By Rick Koster

Publication: TheDay.com
Published 01/19/2010 12:00 AM
Updated 01/19/2010 01:49 PM

A year or so ago, I wrote a column about getting older. It wasn’t so much about me, per se, or even humans — by which I mean I was concerned that many of my favorite crime authors are getting up there, and I was worried about how I could get through the world without such fictional friends as James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel, John Connolly's Charley Parker, Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, or Ian Rankin's John Rebus.

Indelibly tattooed on that list, of course, were Spenser and Hawk and a cop named Jesse Stone — and so the news comes down today that their brilliant creator, Robert B. Parker, has passed away in his beloved Boston.

I can’t tell you what bad news this is, or how grateful I am to Parker for his work over the course of probably 50 novels — and the entire mathematics department at Princeton couldn’t calculate how many happy-ass hours I spent reading Parker’s works.

Several years ago, just because I could, I re-read all the Spenser novels (at the time) in order. It was a fine investment of my energy.

As for this being a music blog, I must tell you: if you ever spent any time reading Parker, you know what an amazing virtuoso he was, and that there was incredible melody and rhythm in his words.

Early reports suggest Parker died at his desk in his home office. Is it too selfish of me to devoutly hope Parker had just typed THE END on his latest Spenser novel? It would certainly give me a small bit of comfort — and I know it woulda made Parker happy to go out in such fashion.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/01/spenser-for-hire...

Robert Parker, author of the popular Spenser novels about a hard-nosed Boston private investigator, died Monday. He was 77.

Parker, who wrote more than 50 novels, including 37 featuring Spenser, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

The Spenser books, which featured snappy repartee from a tough-guy investigator who worked the seamy side of the Boston area, was turned into a TV show Spenser: For Hire, starring actor Robert Urich.

Click on link for more.

USA Today

http://wbztv.com/local/robert.parker.spenser.2.1435100.html

Great VIDEO interview - WBZ (Boston)

Robert B. Parker.

WBZ

Cambridge author Robert B. Parker has died, his publisher confirmed to WBZ Tuesday.

Parker wrote more than 60 books, but he is best known for his Boston-based novels featuring the private detective "Spenser."

Those novels were turned into the TV series "Spenser: For Hire," starring Robert Urich.

Watch: Lisa Hughes' Interview with Parker [CLICK ON LINK AT TOP]

Details of Parker's death have not been released.

He was 77 years old.

http://www.wbz.com/topnews/-Spenser--author-Robert-B--Parker-dead-at-77---AUD/61...

GREAT AUDIO OF RADIO INTERVIEWS WITH WBZ (Boston)

Posted: Tuesday, 19 January 2010 12:49PM

'Spenser' author Robert B. Parker dead at 77 - AUDIO

Boston (WBZ Newsroom) -- Author Robert B. Parker has died.

He was best known for his "Spenser" private detective novels which were made into the ABC-TV series, Spenser: For Hire during the late 1980s.

His publisher, Putnam, says Parker was sitting at his desk in his Cambridge home Monday when he passed away. He was 77.

Parker was a frequent guest on WBZ's David Brudnoy show:

He was married to Joan Parker. They have two sons.

Parker earned a BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and earned his Master's degree in English literature from Boston University.

He also received a PhD degree in English literature from Boston University

Parker wrote his first novel in 1971 while at Northeastern University. He became a full professor in 1976, and turned to full-time writing in 1979 with five Spenser novels to his credit.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/01/19/robert-b-parker-an-appreciation/

* January 19, 2010, 12:30 PM ET

Robert B. Parker, An Appreciation

Robert B. Parker, who is largely responsible for the rejuvenation in the 1970s of the hard-boiled genre of crime fiction, died today at his desk at his Cambridge, Mass., home, it was reported. He was 77 years old. I’m honored to say he was a mentor and an advisor when we shared an editor at G.P. Putnam.

A literary descendant of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald, Parker was best known for his series featuring the Boston-based private detective Spenser, a tough, relentless crime fighter with a tender side. Unlike his investigative predecessors, Spenser kept a house near the Boston Commons, cooked and savored his meals, and had complex relationships with the women in his life, many of whom were accomplished professionals, including his great love, Susan Silverman, who is as real to me as a neighbor.

He also wrote a series of novels featuring Jesse Stone, an ex-cop, that was set in the fictional town of Paradise, Massachusetts, and revived Chandler’s Philip Marlowe character, completing Chandler’s “Poodle Springs” in 1989.

The first time I met him was at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts, though he had already been generous with a blurb for my first novel, “Closing Time.” Among the kind words were his opinion that my book was “a lovely story, full of tension and heartbreak” — which is what I would’ve said about many of his Spenser novels. At Kate’s, I told him how his novel “Early Autumn,” the seventh in the Spenser series, had an enormous influence on my view of the possibilities for crime fiction. “I thought the genre was dead,” I said, or something equally breathless and fan-like. “You brought it back to life.” He said, “And you’re the one who will take it forward.” I was rocked back on my heels and later that night, was teary-eyed with pride. Perhaps he said this to every author was aspired to follow in his literary footsteps. Even if so, I hold that comment as precious to this day.

Almost simultaneously today, I learned that Parker had died and one of my short stories was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. The nomination, in a way, serves as what will no doubt among many tributes to Robert B. Parker in the coming weeks by authors he influenced. Without Bob Parker, I wouldn’t have thought to try to write crime fiction with characters whose personal lives were as rich and complex as those of the people who read our books. There are countless other authors who can say the same thing. Their writing, and the joy their work brings to readers, is a tribute to Parker, whose death saddens us even as we recall how he shared with us his light.

Please leave your thoughts about Parker in the comments.

The Wall Street Journal - Speakeasy

http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/books/view.bg?articleid=1226748&sr...

Boston Herald

In Spenser, Robert B. Parker created one of crime fiction’s best

By Mat Schaffer / Appreciation
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - Updated 4h ago

Friends and fans of Spenser creator Robert B. Parker are mourning the loss of the Boston author. He died Monday at age 77, just sitting at his desk, according to his publisher.

Where else would he have been? The prolific Parker published 37 Spenser mysteries, nine more featuring North Shore police chief Jesse Stone, six with Hub private investigator Sunny Randall and an additional 13 books that ranged from westerns to young adult fiction to two novels starring Raymond Chandler’s famed detective Philip Marlowe. And more Parker books will be released posthumously.

Spenser, the larger-than-life private eye with an equally large heart - a private eye committed to righting wrongs whatever that may take - will be Parker’s most enduring literary legacy. Over the years, readers faithfully followed his exploits, his relationship with Cambridge psychologist Susan Silverman and his longterm friendship with his imperturbable second gun Hawk.

In Spenser, Parker created Boston’s - and Bostonians’ - own modern day knight errant. We’d gaze up at the buildings on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley streets and wonder which one contained Spenser’s office. You can walk down Marlborough Street near the Public Garden and imagine Spenser cooking dinner in his apartment. Drive down Atlantic Avenue, and search for the Harbor Health Club, where Spenser and Hawk (both former boxers) worked out. Or cross the river to Cambridge and try to figure out which house on Linnaean Street belonged to Spenser’s sweetheart, Susan Silverman.

But for a true Spenser sighting, you’d have to catch a glimpse of Parker and his beloved wife Joan. They were the real-life Spenser and Susan. Parker was as big and strong, clever and perceptive as his protagonist; Joan is as smart, sexy and unstoppable as her fictional counterpart.

And both were as head-over-heels in love as Spenser and Susan.

You could often see the couple dining at local restaurants, which would subsequently appear in Parker novels. And attending charitable events, where the Parkers raised thousands of dollars for the fight against HIV/AIDS, feeding the terminally ill and supporting the arts. (Their sons David and Daniel are, respectively, a choreographer and an actor).

Today, in an e-mail from Cambodia where he is vacationing, Community Servings Executive Director David Waters wrote, “Over the years, they often hosted parties in their home, lent the ‘Spenser’ glamour to our fundraising events, and co-chaired two capital campaigns to support our building campaigns. We will miss Bob dearly.”

As will those in Boston and around the world who ran out to buy and then devour each new book of his as soon as it was published.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/0119/In-appreciation-of-Ro...

In appreciation of Robert B. Parker, creator of "Spenser for Hire"

Robert B. Parker, prolific and beloved writer of detective fiction, died at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

By Marjorie Kehe / January 19, 2010 / The Christian Science Monitor

Some of us have known Robert B. Parker almost as long as we could read. I remember first picking up a "Spenser" novel in 1979, when I was 21 and had just moved to Boston straight out of college. By the time I put that book down (I remember that I turned the last page while sitting in a North End cafe), I had somehow become a Bostonian.

Parker was a prolific writer who churned out more than 60 books in his lifetime, working in genres including Westerns and young adult novels. But it was as a crafter of detective fiction that Parker will be best and most fondly remembered, and most particularly for his 37 novels starring Spenser, the tough but lovable Boston private detective whose name was spelled like that of the poet.

Spenser was a former boxer. He traveled light and talked tough. But he loved his city, the Red Sox, his girl (psychiatrist Susan Silverman), and his running buddy (Hawk, an equally tough and casually beguiling fellow crime-fighter).

Parker himself started life as an academic. He wrote a PhD thesis on detective fiction and worked as a college professor before he discovered his true vocation as a novelist.

Two more of his books, "Split Image" and "Blue-Eyed Devil," are scheduled for publication this year. But last year's release, "The Professional," will now be the final word on Spenser.

Fittingly perhaps, Parker, who spent so much of his life shaping books, is reported to have died sitting at his desk in his study in Cambridge, Mass.

Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor’s book editor. You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/MarjorieKehe

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2010/01/19/in-memoriam-robert-parker/

Jan 19 2010 04:43 PM ET

In Memoriam: Robert B. Parker
by Tina Jordan

Robert B. Parker, who evoked the streets of Boston in over 60 bristling, crisply witty crime novels, died on January 18 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77. According to his agent, Parker suffered a heart attack and died at his desk, perhaps not surprising for a man who wrote religiously every day (and sometimes published three books a year). I read his Jesse Stone novels, I read his Sunny Randall novels, but, like many of Parker’s readers, what I loved best were his Spenser novels, featuring the blunt, wisecracking Boston private investigator with a heart of gold. (“The question of spelling Spenser’s name has arisen,” he once wrote on his blog. “I may be the only one who has never misspelled it. Spenser with an S, like the English poet…”) Parker, a onetime English professor, was clearly influenced by such writers as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett , but his main characters were starkly different from theirs. Spenser was social. He was a gourmet cook (his dishes feature prominently in each of his books – so much so that Parker had apparently once considered writing a cookbook), and he had complicated, loving relationships with women. “He’s not unhappy and he’s not isolated,” Parker said once. “He doesn’t say, Get me off this frozen star, as Marlowe does in one of the books. The loneliness is the price Marlowe pays for his integrity. Spenser is able to maintain it in context, unlike Marlowe, who has to remain separate in order to remain pure.”

I’m still reeling from news of Parker’s death and trying to come up with my list of his favorites. How about any of you? Which Parker books do you love most?

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-DE487_parker_CV_20090223125929.jpg

Robert B. Parker

http://robertbparker.net/books.asp

All the books written by Robert B. Parker -- worth looking at this huge list of wonderful reading!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011902195....

By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 2010; 5:10 PM

Robert B. Parker, 77, a popular and prolific author of hard-boiled American crime fiction, best known for the 37-book Spenser series which became an ABC television show in the 1980s, died Jan. 18, at his writing desk at home in Cambridge, Mass. A cause of death was not immediately known, but his longtime agent, Helen Brann, said it appeared to have been a heart attack.

Mr. Parker helped revive the detective fiction genre with his wise-cracking, street-smart and surprisingly literate Boston private-eye Spenser (no first name and with an "s" not a "c"). The character -- an ex-boxer and ex-state policeman -- is also a gourmet cook who grapples with his complex relationships with a witty female companion, an African American alter ego and a foster son. Named for Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare's contemporary, the character and series became a favorite of the literati who enjoyed crisp, witty prose.

Mr. Parker's work was notable for its quick pace, evocative descriptions, sharp dialogue and concentration upon themes that included the troubled status of adolescents, and of women in contemporary society. His protagonists, however, were tough guys, prone to violence, who nevertheless were true to a moral code as they protected a lesbian writer in "Looking for Rachel Wallace" (1980), chased after international terrorists in "The Judas Goat" (1983) and investigated drug smuggling in "Pale Kings and Princes" (1987) and "Pastime" (1991).

Mr. Parker wrote 65 books in 37 years, and was among the top 10 best-selling authors in the world, Brann said, with 6 to 8 million books sold. He was also the 1976 winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award, its 2002 Grand Master Award and Mystery Ink's 2007 Gumshoe Award for Lifetime Achievement.

In addition to the "Spenser: For Hire" television series, which starred the late Robert Urich, Mr. Parker's Jesse Stone novels became CBS television movies starring Tom Selleck starting in 2005. "Appaloosa," his 2005 Western, was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris.

A third fictional private-eye series, Sunny Randall, was created at the request of Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt, who asked Mr. Parker to write a novel with a female investigator. The first book did not become a feature film, but it was another bestseller.

His prodigious output was the result of a disciplined work ethic: He wrote five pages per day, five days a week, 50 weeks per year.

"I started writing the Jesse Stone novels because I realized that at this point in my career it takes me three to four months to write a Spenser novel and as a result I have a lot of time on my hands," he told Bookreporter.com in 2000. His next book, "Split Image," a Jesse Stone book, comes out next month, and he has turned in several books that have not yet been published, including some in the Spenser series, Brann said.

Robert Brown Parker was born Sept. 17, 1932, in Springfield, Mass., and graduated in 1954 from Colby College in Maine. He went into the Army for the next two years. He earned a master's degree in 1957 and a doctorate in 1971, both in English from Boston University. His doctoral dissertation was a study of the private eye in the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

Mr. Parker earned his living as a technical writer at Raytheon, and in the advertising department at Prudential Insurance until the doctoral degree got him a full professorship at Northeastern University in Boston, where he began to write seriously. His first novel, "The Godwulf Manuscript," sold within three weeks of completion. Over the next five years, Mr. Parker wrote four more Spenser novels, each increasingly successful. Finally in 1979, he was able to quit teaching and devote himself full time to writing.

So

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/robert-b-parker-mystery-writer-has-...

ArtsBeat - New York Times Blog
January 19, 2010, 2:09 pm
Robert B. Parker, Mystery Writer, Has Died at 77
By BRUCE WEBER

Update | 4:25 p.m. Robert B. Parker, the best-selling mystery writer who created Spenser, a tough, glib, Boston private detective who was the hero of nearly 40 novels, died on Monday at home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 77.

The cause was a heart attack, said his agent of 37 years, Helen Brann. She said Mr. Parker had been thought to be in splendid health, and that he died at his desk, working on a book. He wrote every single day, she said.

Mr. Parker wrote more than 60 books all told, including westerns and young adult novels, but he churned out entertaining detective stories with a remarkable alacrity that made him one of the country’s most popular writers. In recent years he created two new protagonists, Jesse Stone, an alcoholic ex-ballplayer turned small-town chief of police, who has been featured in nine novels since 1997 (including one to be published in February), and Sunny Randall, a fashion-conscious, unlucky-in-love, gun-toting female private eye. But it was Spenser, spelled “like the poet,” as the character is wont to point out — his first name is never revealed — who was Mr. Parker’s signature creation.

Witty, self-aware and a conscious throwback to hard-boiled detectives of the literary past like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Spenser is a bruiser in body and a softy at heart, someone who never shies from danger or walks away from a threat to the innocent. He is faithful in love (to his longtime companion, Susan Silverman, a psychologist) and in friendship (to his frequent partner in anti-crime, a dazzlingly charming, morally idiosyncratic black man named Hawk), and with those two at his side, he is seemingly indomitable, vanquishing crime bosses, drug dealers, sex fiends, cold-blooded killers, corrupt politicians and several other varieties of villain. For a time, from 1985-88, he appeared as the central character of a television series, “Spenser: For Hire,” starring Robert Urich.

A full obituary will follow.

http://robertarood.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/robert_b_parker_large.jpg

Robert B Parker