A Note on Parker's Spenser: Hard-Boiled Detective Turned Super Hero

In an interview for this piece, Robert B. Parker states that his character, Spenser, the hard-boiled Boston P.I. who has been featured in over thirty novels, is exactly "what he appears to be." Indeed, Spenser is a straightforward character from novel to novel. Various other characters notice his size, the scar tissue around his eyes as indicator of a boxer's past, and (for women and the occasional gay man) his sex appeal. These traits are readily apparent early. Push further through the pages and one finds Spenser to be tough, morally straight, uncompromising in his own behaviors despite chaos in one form or another expanding around him.

It is this steadiness that bears addressing. Spenser is a detective by both design and trade; Parker states that he was attempting to re-create Philip Marlow in his original conception of the Boston P.I. What Parker has actually done, particularly as the series has progressed, is create a sort of hard-boiled super hero, strong as ten men, ageless, and essentially bullet proof.

Uncomplicated virtue can be a difficult thing to portray well. Many noir heroes of modern works are complicated by one personal downfall or another. Jake Gettys of Chinatown is drawn as money motivated and fundamentally selfish; the hero of Polanski's noir classic sinks himself into the mystery at hand primarily to clear his own name. Jump forward thirty years and examine Brian Johnson's Brick, the half parody, half homage to older noir films, in which high school sleuth Brendan Fry seeks answers to the death of his girlfriend. Brendan is stained by the sins of his past, his ties to the high school's drug dealing power structure.

Perhaps the most notable character related to Spenser is Allan Moore's Rhourshack, the moral absolutist of Watchmen, the celebrated graphic novel. This is because Rhourshack, in a thoroughly non-traditional sense, is a "super hero" not bound by the rules of society, ruthless and efficient in his calling, and most importantly, powered by an ethos rather than physical gifts—Rhourshack believes he understands the world, and the human condition, completely: "we spin alone, in darkness. God is not watching." This conviction makes him stronger than those around him; at least he believes as much.

Spenser draws from a similarly powerful ethos. Asked about his great strength in both A Savage Place and Playmates, Spenser states he has it "because his heart is pure." In A Catskill Eagle, a CIA agent named Yves repeatedly refers to Spenser as "young Lochinvar," a reference to the most righteous knight of Arthur's round table. Similar statements are common enough in the series so that their weight cannot be dismissed. Spenser is obviously being somewhat ironic with his pure heart comment, but indeed, his strength, on both a moral and physical level, really is that of ten.

Although Spenser lives by his own moral code (one that allows violence and sexual promiscuity, yet prohibits disloyalty and dishonesty), he violates that code, in significant fashion, only twice during the course of the Spenser novels. In Mortal Stakes, the third book in the series, he sets up and murders Frank Doehr, a malevolent shylock, in defense of his clients. Though the action is performed to help the innocent, it is a pre-meditated act of murder, unique to the Spenser cannon. His other significant moral failing takes place in A Savage Place, in which he commits an act of infidelity toward Susan Silverman with Candy Sloan, an act made more significant in that the infidelity is on an emotional level, rather than a physical one. In Spenserian vernacular, this constitutes a major sin, and interestingly, Candy is the one who dies for it.

Beyond these two lapses, however, Parker's P.I. is pure, at least as per the rules of the world he lives in. The rules he follows, and that those "like him" follow (Hawk, his long time friend and cohort, the Boston Police lieutenant Martin Quirk, Captain Healy of the state police, to name a few) and live by...