In Pursuit of Spenser by Otto Penzler Page B

authority. Never mind that the hard-working, little-esteemed cowboy of frontier reality and the professional nine-to-five independent investigator of modern times bear small resemblance to their idealized counterparts in fiction. These men (and, increasingly, women) are heroes for hire, unique to a culture that lists individual initiative at the top of its virtues.
    Now, the concept of the oak-hewn, native-born demigod is an impossible ideal. Inevitably, constant scrutiny and salacious revelation will break it to bits. But, as has been said, what we are and what we like to think we are say the same thing about us as a people. It’s better to overreach than not reach at all, and to expect more than we get. Life must disappoint us in this. Good fiction never does.
    Spenser is an icon straddling two centuries. Those who aren’t familiar with his image in print know him through his characterizations on TV as presented by the late Robert Urich and the ubiquitous Joe Montegna. (At the time I interviewed Urich, while I was covering the taping of Lonesome Dove for TV Guide , I could not resist asking how he felt about the cancellation of Spenser: For Hire on ABC. He said that the network had made the decision to clear room for a new Aaron Spelling show, and that he was inconsolable over the loss of what he considered the role of a lifetime.) Spenser has even managed an enthusiastic endorsement in comic strips by way of Jimmy Johnson’s Boomer-friendly Arlo and Janis , and has provided the clue to many a crossword-puzzle answer. Pop-culture immortality is the most enduring of all.
    Women admire Spenser for his rugged good looks, his love of and respect for Susan Silverman—his brilliant and capable girlfriend—and his compassion. Men like him for his courage, strength, and determined self-sufficiency: autonomy is a favorite word in his vocabulary. He’s a hit with cops, and that isn’t an obvious slam-dunk in a genre that hasn’t always paid strict attention to such trifles as standard police procedure and due process. A sergeant I rode along with years ago with the local county sheriff’s department was such a fan that he carried extra copies of Parker’s books in his patrol car to give out to people he encountered during the 4 p.m.-to-midnight shift—some of them suspects under arrest. He routinely sacrificed his meal break to raid the dumpsters behind bookstores for discarded paperbacks whose covers had been torn off to return to publishers when they failed to sell. His personal library of books without covers was one of the largest in Southeastern Michigan—although as Parker’s popularity increased and his returns diminished, Spenser became scarce on his shelves.
    Parker’s cast of supporting characters is equally well-drawn as his lead. Susan Silverman, a licensed psychologist, is a devoted companion and a worthy adversary in the philosophical discussions that add a layer of dimension to Spenser’s actions: Even a disastrous experiment in cohabitation, in Double Deuce , could not destroy their relationship. (Personally, I was surprised when it didn’t work out: a man who shares beer from the same bottle with his Labrador retriever and a woman who calmly replaces the lid on a cooking stewpot after dropping it on the floor without pausing to rinse it off would suggest to me the ideal domestic arrangement. But who am I to judge? My wife washes fruit.)
    Martin Quirk and Frank Belson, the Boston City police detectives who are always crossing Spenser’s path, are tough and smart, which is not commonly the case when an outsider protagonist matches wits with them in this type of story. And the sinister Hawk—the psychopathic, atavistic Hawk, heir to the position once held by Injun Joe, Israel Hand, and the Golem—whom Parker once described as the kind of man Spenser might have become under other circumstances, is one of the standout characters in popular fiction. “Gonna get you killed someday, babe,” Hawk says in