A winter night—quiet, snow falling outside, the light of this winter day fading in the west, Mt. Ascutney filling the southern horizon, and no particular interest in returning to Helen Vendler’s close reading of last poems or Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poetry either.  What could be better than to browse the bookcase in the guest house which I had stocked earlier this winter with Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels.  Parker wrote 40 novels featuring this brawny, brainy Boston detective whose code of ethics prevents him from using excessive violence except when absolutely necessary.  The whole cast of the Spenser novels was magnificent—the school psychologist and recently divorced Susan Silverman, the violent but loyal Hawk, Henry Cimoli who ran the gym, Martin Quirk a Boston Police lieutenant, and Paul Giacomin, the lost 15 year old who Parker ‘adopted’ and shepherded into an adulthood of dance and self-assurance.

Randomly choosing from among the 20 or so books on the shelf, I managed to pick up the this one in which Paul meets Spenser, and an excellent choice it was.  A paperback among a dozen or so hardbacks, this was a great pick,  and 24 hours of on-and-off reading brought me to the end.

If you’ve never met Spenser or read Parker, do so.  He’s the heir to Hammett, Chandler, and Queen and the precursor to Connelly, Coben, and Child.  The action is fast-paced and credible; the dialogue is witty and clever; the literary references are many; the meals he cooks up are splendid. There’s not a down side to any one of his books.  Sadly, when Parker died too soon in 2010, his estate passed on the Spenser franchise to two other mystery writers.  The subsequent books have not been very good.

My favorite memory of Parker who was a neighbor here in Cambridge was a ‘book reading’ he was to do at the Brattle Theater.  At the appointed time he walked out onto the stage and said ‘Are there any questions?’.  When nobody spoke up, he began to walk off the stage when some brave soul shouted out a query.  Parker returned to center stage, and answered questions for a fascinating hour.  A great character.