High Profile

In the three days since detective novelist Robert B. Parker died, there’s been an outpouring of analysis and emotion on the Web. Even some critics who once derided him for writing too fast or without enough novelty per book have discovered a new appreciation for him now that he’s passed away at age 77. (Parker would undoubtedly enjoy a good chuckle at these conversions.) There’s also been time to consider what he left behind, and what of his work is yet to appear. Here are a few links worth mentioning.

• The best news may be that there are still more Parker books in the pipeline, all from publisher Putnam. Split Image, his ninth outing for small-town Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone, is set for release in late February. His fifth western novel, Blue-Eyed Devil, is due out in May. And Painted Ladies, the 39th entry in his obviously long-running series about Boston gumshoe Spenser, should reach U.S. bookstores in September. Whether other titles will appear after that, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised. In his last blog post, dated May 29 of last year, Parker wrote: “I am currently writing a book with the working title Sixkill in which a new character joins Spenser’s world. Probably be out next year.” Does that mean Sixkill was the original title of Painted Ladies, or is there a 40th Spenser adventure waiting in the wings? And given his prolificacy, there might be some unfinished Parker works out there, too.

• In addition to the obituaries I mentioned in my Tuesday post, The Guardian carries a good one written by American-born UK critic Michael Carlson. It begins:

The late 1960s saw a Raymond Chandler revival in the U.S., and in 1973 Robert B Parker’s novel The Godwulf Manuscript introduced Spenser, a modern version of Chandler’s detective, Philip Marlowe. In addition to the literary reference behind his character’s name, Parker, who has died aged 77, borrowed Chandler’s first-person narration, wisecracking dialogue, and his detective’s strong moral code. A flowering of neo-Chandler writing followed.

Spenser operated in the criminal backwater of Boston, in Parker’s home state of Massachusetts, rather than the favoured crime-fiction locations of New York and Los Angeles. Soon, writers such as Jonathan Valin, Loren Estleman and Michael Z. Lewin were basing hard-boiled heroes in Cincinnati, Detroit and Indianapolis. Thirty-seven Spenser novels later--including one featuring a young Spenser, published for the juvenile market--Parker has been undoubtedly the most important influence on the American detective novel in the past three decades.

You’ll find Carlson’s complete obit here. Also worth reading: his blog post about what’s missing from the published Guardian piece, and his 2008 “interview with Parker” on the occasion of the release of the seventh Jesse Stone novel, Stranger in Paradise.

• If you haven’t tired of tributes to the author, check out some late entries by Steve Lewis, Mark Troy, Gerald So, Dave White, the anonymous author of Whipped Cream Difficulties, Otto Penzler, Marilyn Stasio, and even fellow Boston writer Dennis Lehane. There’s also a nice piece in The Boston Globe by Parker’s longtime friend and former office mate, Gary Goshgarian.

• Finally, readers who have never heard Parker speak might like to listen to this interview he did with Elizabeth Foxwell for her late radio show, It’s a Mystery. In it, they discuss “Spenser and Hawk, how he feels about Hollywood, his Western novels, and more.” And a real treat, found on Parker’s own Web site, is a clip of him and his younger, actor son, Daniel, singing a duet of the Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini classic, “Moon River.” The first, lower voice you hear is the author’s.