Author of the Spenser series, amongst others. if you haven't read him give him a try..

Robert B Parker
Robert B Parker, the American crime novelist, who has died aged 77, helped revive and modernise the hard-boiled private eye genre through his Spenser series of novels.

Published: 6:25PM GMT 20 Jan 2010

Comments 3 | Comment on this article

Photo: AP Of Parker's 60 novels, 37 featured Spenser, a former Boston detective fired for insubordination who was dubbed by Parker's admirers as "the thinking man's private eye".

The character's first name was a permanent mystery, with his last name emphatically spelled with an "s" in the middle, rather than a "c", after Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene in the 16th century.


Related Articles
Ric Hardman
Gordon Burn
Middle-aged women want to read about sex
Donald E Westlake
Raymond Chandler's novels under the magnifying glassA one-time professor of English, Parker claimed stylistic descent from Raymond Chandler, the British-born master of hard-boiled crime fiction whose work he much admired; he also considered himself influenced by Hemingway, Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald.

But the derivative echoes of Chandler could sometimes transcend imitation and become parody, as in this vignette from Parker's 1997 Spenser novel Small Vices:

"'Can I get you some coffee?' she said. 'Or something stronger?'

'Coffee would be fine,' I said.

She unbuttoned the last button and shrugged out of her coat. Except for the high boots, she had nothing on under it.

'Or maybe something stronger,' I said."

"The debt to Chandler is so great," complained the British crime fiction critic Julian Symons, "as to make the writing ludicrous at times."

Not that such strictures ever troubled Parker, who sold more than four million copies of his books worldwide. He sold particularly well in Japan, and much of his work was bought by Hollywood or adapted for television.

Built like a fighter but harbouring the soul of a poet, Spenser made his debut in The Godwulf Manuscript (1973). In this and other early novels in the series, Parker recreated the cool, clipped style of Chandler and other mystery writers such as Dashiell Hammett. With later titles – for example Looking for Rachel Wallace and Early Autumn (both 1980) – Parker was acclaimed as a master in his own right.

Spenser represented a new breed of sensitive sleuth, an early model of "the New Man" who could whip up a gourmet supper and show that it was possible to live a normal life of intimacy and affection with a woman. Parker was ahead of the curve in having Spenser adapt to changing gender roles, so much so that some critics accused his protagonist of being "soft-boiled".

Although originally modelled on Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Spenser differed from him in several respects. Notably, in Promised Land (1976), Parker gave him a sidekick, a brutally-efficient African-American (and former adversary) called Hawk, who became Spenser's best friend and de facto partner.

Parker's crime writing was noted for its style, mixing lively, spare prose with wisecracks, flippant one-liners and literary allusions supplied by the well-read, poetry-quoting Spenser.

His themes ranged from feminist politics to feral youth gangs, as in Double Deuce (1992), which is set on a Boston housing estate plagued by drug dealers – a recurring issue in Parker's work was the effect on children of broken relationships. He gave Spenser a long-term love interest of his own in Susan Silverman, a know-all psychotherapist whose insights highlighted Parker's concerns.

The character is thought to have been based on Parker's own wife, Joan Hall Parker, who worked as a staff development specialist for the Massachusetts State Board of Education.

Parker was also known for his novels about Sunny Randall, a woman detective, and another series featuring Jesse Stone, a small-town police chief. His other books included a series of Westerns and Perchance to Dream, a sequel to Chandler's classic The Big Sleep.

In an interview in 1996, Parker underlined several similarities between himself and Spenser. Both appreciated good food – Spenser dined at some of Parker's favourite restaurants; both liked baseball and jazz; both were veterans of the Korean War; and both could throw a punch.

"He does a great many things I don't believe," Parker said. "I don't know if he's more violent that I am. But he's more willing to enact it than I am. Let's just say we're not dissimilar."

Parker said that typically he wrote 10 pages a day, never knew what would happen next, finished a book without revising it and then turned the manuscript over to his wife. He learned how the story would turn out only in the writing of it, making the novel a kind of parallel adventure for both author and character.

Robert Brown Parker was born on September 17 1932 at Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of a telephone company engineer. At Dean Academy he read detective tales in pulp magazines, and in 1950 enrolled at Colby College, Maine, graduating in English in 1954.

After serving for two years as a radio operator with the US Army in Korea he took jobs as a technical writer and as the co-owner of an advertising agency before receiving his PhD in English from Boston's Northeastern University in 1971. His dissertation was on Hammett and Chandler.

Parker had joined the English faculty in 1968 as an assistant English professor, and it was while he was teaching there that he created Spenser, observing later that he was inspired in part because Chandler was dead and he missed his famous detective, Philip Marlowe.

In the late 1980s Parker was chosen to complete a Philip Marlowe novel that Raymond Chandler had left unfinished at his death in 1959. To Chandler's opening four chapters, Parker added a further 37. The result, Poodle Springs (1989), impressed most of the critics, the novelist Ed McBain for one observing that "Parker sounds more like Chandler than Chandler himself".

A burly, unflappable figure with a wry wit, Parker continued to turn out four novels a year from his 1869 Victorian clapboard house in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bill Clinton was a fan of his work, but Parker never pictured a notional reader, concentrating merely on getting the story right: "The only question I ask is: 'Is it any good?'"

Parker won two Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and a Grand Master Edgar in 2002 for lifetime achievement. A new Jesse Stone novel, Split Image, is due to appear next month, and several other books, including some more Spenser novels, are in the pipeline.

Robert B Parker's wife, Joan, found him dead at his desk on Monday. She and their two sons http://www.telegraph.co.u...tmlsurvive him.
[Edited 1/20/10 12:56pm]