Watch it Free: SPENSER FOR HIRE (1985-88)

I watched this show (most likely all of it) when it ran for three season between 1985 and 1988. Memory tells me it was fairly high-quality TV private eye fare, up there with The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I.. You know what I mean. Good, but not exceptional. Nowhere near as good as the books, still a bit above average. 

Well, I just watched an episode, for the first time since 1988 - on IMDbTV - and found my memory had served me well. It was exactly that, and nothing more. Still, to Parker fans, especially uberfans like me, it has its attractions. (Want to watch it on IMDbTV? I'll tell you how down below.)

I'm basing this on a single episode, mind you, the first official episode of Season 1, called "No Room at the Inn," but I expect it will be no more or less special than the 63 episodes to follow. I'll be watching some of them, and if I'm wrong you'll hear about it. 

The casting is OK. Robert Urich (as Spenser) could be a little bigger, Susan Silverman could be little more Jewish, Quirk could be taller and Belson could be seedier, but they're pretty much par for the course. The only gem in the cast is Avery Brooks as Hawk (You may know him as Capt. Benjamin Sikso from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). He's right on target, and deserving of his own show, which he got - briefly - in the 13 episode spin-off A Man Called Hawk in 1989. 

The story was acceptable, the setting was good (some filming was done in Boston and some in L.A.) and the character relationships were about right. The only real problem is Spenser's dialogue - and, as an extension of that - his narration. Unlike Ace Atkins, who's doing a fine job on the current novels, the writer had no feel for Parker's humor. It's standard TV stuff, with none of the Spenser sparkle. 

There was one nice Inside Baseball moment. Spenser goes into a building to question a desk clerk, and the guy is reading a paperback copy of Wilderness. That was Parker's first non-Spenser novel, I believe, and one that's dang near forgotten today.

The three TV movies made between 1999 and 2001 with Joe Mantegna fared better, no doubt because Parker was directly involved. Mantegna was also narrating the audiobooks produced at the time, and had a good feel for the character. 

Now, you're no doubt aware, there's a Netflix movie called Spenser Confidential with Mark Wahlberg in the title role. Since I'm too cheap for Netflix, I don't expect to see it for a while, and have no idea what to expect. It's based on an Ace Atkins novel, though, so if there's enough of Ace's Parker voice in it, it could be good.

IMDbTV, I recently discovered, is a free streaming service piggy-backed on the IMDb website. IMDb has info on everything, of course, but they now have a growing number of films and TV shows you can watch right on their site. This is one of them. But it's a little tricky. Here's how:

After you've signed up for a free IMDbTV account, search for the show, and look for the big yellow tab that says "Watch Free on IMDbTV."

That should bring up a list of episodes. After a brief delay, links should appear beneath each available episode, reading, again, (in tiny type) "Watch Free on IMDbTV." You'll note there is no link beneath the pilot episode, "Promised Land," so that one is presumably not available. But there is one beneath the first regular episode, "No Room at the Inn," and beneath every other episode in Season 1. Click one of those links, and it should start the show.

Give it a try. Once past the initial user-unfriendliness, it works great.

Forgotten Stories: The one and only SPENSER short by Robert B. Parker (1982)

I've been reading the Spenser series since the early '80s. I've been through the whole run several times, in both in print and audio, and I'm still enjoying the Ace Atkins efforts of the past few years. Though Red Harvest remains my single favorite book, Parker is my favorite writer, and the Spenser saga is my favorite series. I've heard everyone else's reasons for why they dropped out at one time or another, and they don't faze me at all. All of which goes to say that I identify as a Spenser superfan.

So how the heck did it get to be 2017 before I found out Parker had written a Spenser short story way back in 1982? Beats me! I just happened to see a short story listed on a Parker bibliography (not identified as a Spenser) and tracked down a copy of its first reprinting, in the 1991 anthology New Crimes 3. To my further embarrassment, I now find it was reprinted yet again in Boston Noir 2: The Classics in 2012.

"Surrogate," which runs 12 pages in the New Crimes 3, begins with a phone call from Brenda Loring, who reports that a man has broken into her home an raped her for the second time in two weeks. Brenda, you may recall, (related at least spiritually to Linda Loring, the woman Philip Marlowe met in The Long Goodbye and married in "The Poodle Springs Story") was the woman Spenser was dating in his first novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, back in 1973. She made only a couple more appearances before being aced out by Susan Silverman. 

In "Surrogate," we learn that Brenda has since been unhappily married and divorced. Spenser calls Hawk for help, and, with their usual aplomb, they bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion. No, it's not particularly great stuff, and it's not essential to the canon, but it is a genuine Spenser story, and to a superfan like me, cannot be ignored. This is me not ignoring it. 

The story was first published in a signed and numbered edition, limited to 300 copies, in 1982. The book, based on pics and descriptions found online, was a rose-colored hardcover with a gun motif on the boards (you be the judge), and a rose-colored dust jacket (at top) bearing a charcoal drawing of Brenda Loring. Is it ugly? I think so, but YBTJ. 50 of those copies were considered "deluxe," with a leather spine and blue cloth slipcase. 

I'm relying on internet pics and descriptions because the regular edition now commands between $400 and $1000, and two folks offering the deluxe job are asking $2500. Superfan yes, superrich no.

Forgotten Books: THE BOXER AND THE SPY by Robert B. Parker (2008)

Help! I’m fast running out of unread Robert B. Parker books. Unless a battered tin dispatch box with new manuscripts turns up soon, I’ll have to break down and finally read Love and Glory, followed by the two he wrote with his wife, Three Weeks in Spring and A Year at the Races.

The Boxer and the Spy is the second of Parker’s three YA novels. I read the others, The Edenville Owls and Chasing the Bear, a couple of years ago, and don’t recall much about them, though I must not have hated them. I didn’t hate this one, either. Once I got used to it, in fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

What took getting used to was the repetition. Do Young Adults really need to read something over and over to get the point? Is their Short Attention Spanitis really that severe?

The biggest annoyance here was the overuse of steroids. Not by the characters, because I didn’t care about the users anyway, but by the author. The word “steroids” (or "'roids" for short) appears 62 times in this book (I know because my kindle told me so).

There’s a kid, you see, who supposedly committed suicide, and steroids (Yikes, I said it again) were found in his system, so all the Old Adults assume they were the cause. Our hero, 15-year-old Terry Novak and his 15-year-old almost-a-girl-friend Abby, don’t believe it, and spend oodles of time talking about it, and trying and failing to find out what steroids (I can’t help myself) are all about. They search online and quickly give up, then ask the school nurse and are turned away, and fret over their lack of knowledge well into the second half of the book, when they get some dope from the AMA via an older kid who works at the pharmacy. (Which brings up a sub-annoyance. Are we really supposed to believe it’s that hard for 15-year-olds to find info online?) Anyway, I got really tired of hearing the word.

The other repeated theme is he-was-gay-but-Terry- doesn’t-care. This mantra is repeated nine times. The fact that the dead kid was probably gay has nothing to do with the plot, and is never suggested as a cause for his death. It’s only there to make sure we know Terry doesn’t care. So what? Do any 15-year-olds care? I don’t know. Everything I do know about 15-year-olds seems to be about a hundred years out of date. Anyway, that mantra got old fast.

Once I got past that stuff, though, it turned out to be a pretty good book. As you might expect, Terry is sort of a young Spenser, and though he has a parent lurking somewhere offstage, his life lessons come from a retired boxer (now a boxing coach) named George. George, too, has a little Spenser in him, along with a little Hawk, making him the most appealing character in the book. Abby, likewise, is a young Susan Silverman, and though she and Terry have yet to do the do, the two know they are bonded for life.

The rest of the gang of town kids are from Parker’s stock cast of kid characters, employed over the years in various Spenser books, and in particular in the Jesse Stone series, where they regularly interact with the hero. Mr. Bullard, the high school principal, is an over-the-top villain (he’d be more believable running one of the Boston mobs), whose dictatorial powers are supposedly explained by the fact he is also the superintendent.

Parker’s pacing and humor are on display, as ever, making it all go down easy. I wish I could say the same for Robert Knott’s Cole & Hitch books. They have zero humor, scenes run on for many chapters at a time, and the always-annoying Allie is still hanging around (though Parker would probably have kept her, too). The Jesse Stone books were very well handled by Michael Brandman, and Reed Farrel Coleman is doing an equally fine job, despite the fact Jenn is still hanging around (Parker probably would have kept her, too). And Ace Aktins, after taking a couple of books to settle in with Spenser, produced a few extremely Parkerlike entries. He’s now veering into new territory, with his latest twice as long as a later-years Parker entry. I’m still hanging in there will all of them (even Knott, because I’ve gotten used to being disappointed).

YouTube Theater: James Caan as Philip Marlowe in POODLE SPRINGS (1998)

 

Based on the novel . . .

Forgotten Books: WILDERNESS by Robert B. Parker

If all Robert B. Parker books were like Wilderness, he would never have become my favorite writer. It's actually an OK book, and if it had been written by anyone I else I might deem it worthy of four stars. But as a Parker book, it's bottom of the barrel, down there below the Sunny Randall series and the assorted stand-alones and the juveniles and the new Spenser, Jesse Stone and Cole & Hitch books written by other hands, all of which I deem pretty dang good.

That said, it still ain't a bad book. I just hold it to a higher standard. I was a little surprised to note that it was published in 1979, with five Spenser books already a reality. While reading it for the first time - just a couple of weeks ago - it felt like a proto-Spenser novel, with Parker feeling his way along in search of a character. Is it possible he wrote this first, and got it published only in wake of his success with Spenser? It would be pretty to think so, but I have nothing to support that notion. The only comment I've seen by Parker is that it allowed him to write about a hero whose courage was suspect. 

That suspect courage is one of the book's main shortcomings. The other is the hero's constant whining about loving his wife more than she loves him. The hero is a thriller writer named Aaron Neuman with several Spenser characticeristics: He's big, fit, he runs, and (except for the whining) relatively autonomous. His biggest shortcoming is that has abolutely no sense of humor. Wife Janet - at least ast the beginning of the book - is cold, anal and bossy. She's even more annoying that Susan gets when she has her identity crisis circa The Widening Gyre. 

The story kicks off with Neuman seeing a woman murdered. He's determined to do his duty and identify the killer until he's threatened - in a big way - and forced to recant. Cue the crisis of courage and more recriminations from Janet. Eventually, the prodding of his bossy wife and virile next door neighor convince him to take the initiative and murder the killer who's threatening him. 

The hunt for the killer leads eventually into the woods, hence the title, and scenes that foreshadow Spenser being hunted by Gerry Broz twelve years later in Pastime. There are a couple of cops who are not unlike Martin Quirk and Frank Belson. And there are other familiar echoes. I mean, what would a Parker book be without the line "The ways of the Lord are often dark, but never pleasant"?

Forgotten Books: REBEL by Bernard Cornwell (1993)

No, this one (unfortunately) is not about Johnny Yuma, and is not to be confused with the even more unsatisfying book of almost the same name by Johnny Yuma's creator, Andrew Fenady.

Having recently finished Cornwell's amazing Richard Sharpe series, and having read most of his other books (and enjoyed the hell out of all of them), it seemed like a good time to dig into this four-book series starring Nathaniel Starbuck in the American Civil War. Actually, the timing was terrible.

We were getting ready to leave for our week in NYC, and I needed books on my iPad to help me survive the flights. Knowing that ebook versions of most of Cornwell's novels were available through our local libraries, I checked out and downloaded this one and Copperhead (the second in the series), and figured I was set. What I hadn't reckoned on was the American Airlines flight from Hell (Portland to Dallas) and flight from Hell and back (Dallas to New York). The seats were designed for midgets, the air circulation bad and the engine noise loud (no surprises there), but we were seated next to a side passage where rude flight attendants stood yakking incessantly (and at great volume to be heard above the engine noise) about their adventures in home remodeling. They used the same space to refill their metal push carts with pop cans, which they also did with great gusto. Leg 2 of the trip involved less yakking but far more banging.

I've suffered such misery before, of course, and that was the very reason I needed good books to keep me sane. And that's where Rebel enters our story. My first unpleasant surprise was that it was all depressingly familiar. I soon realized I had attempted to read this book before, and eventually gave it up in disgust. The problem is that the hero, Nate Starbuck is (or at least was) a world-class wienie.

Most Cornwell heroes are flawed in some manner, and most live a fish-out-of-water existence, but Starbuck is simply insufferable. The son of a famous firebreathing Northern preacher, Nate is a divinity student lured South and abandoned by an evil woman. Once there, he's too embarrassed to return home, so he decides to stick around and become a rebel. While doing so he mopes about, wallowing in guilt for committing various minor sins of thought or deed.

I might have borne that if there had been other admirable characters, but everyone else in the large cast was almost equally dislikeable. There's a rich guy funding a private Legion for his own glory, his spineless and venal brother-in-law, a son so distressed by the break-up of the Union that he can't bear to fight, a prospective son-in-law who despises his prospective bride and is only in it for the money, a Southerner turned Northern spy who is only in it for the money, and a beautiful but whorish girl who leads men around by their ding-dongs.

Needless to say, these fictional creeps aggravated rather than alleviated the yakking and banging of the real life creeps, and I quit the book halfway through. Normally when that happens I slam the book shut and chuck it against a wall, but as this on my iPad I was deprived even that small pleasure.

Time out. We were so busy in New York that there was no time to read, and by the time we started home I was able to check out the Kindle version of Silent Night, a Spenser novel completed by Parker's agent Helen Brann. It was a great read, and restored my faith in fiction.

Home again, I gave Rebel another chance, and after another chapter or two lamenting Starbuck's sins, Cornwell finally got down to business. The story had been leading up the battle of First Bull Run/Manassas, and once there the author couldn't help but shine. Eventually, Starbuck and two of the other wienies found their backbones, and one of the moneysuckers suffered a satisfying death. I have since peeked ahead at the first couple of chapters of Copperhead, and the improvements appear to be permanent. I'm hoping there will be no relapses.

Forgotten Books: GOD SAVE THE CHILD by Robert B. Parker (1974)

Some notes on my umpteenth reading of the second novel in the Spenser series, published forty years ago:

In a recent post on the series premiere, The Godwulf Manuscript (HERE), I noted that Spenser sounded more like The Continental Op than like Philip Marlowe. In this novel, at least in the beginning, he seems to have softened a little, sounding more like Lew Archer than the Op.

There are, however, some great Marlowe-like lines. In describing his client, whose clothes were obviously picked out by his wife, Spenser notes he "looked as happy as a hound in a doggie sweater."

And there are hat tips to several of Spenser's literary predecessors. In accepting the client's check, he tries to act nonchalant, as if "maybe I'd buy some orchids with it." When asked his name, he answers, "Nick Charles." Another character sarcastically calls him Sherlock Holmes, and  a few pages later he annoys a snooty Assistant Principal named Moriarty. Arriving at his client's house, he makes an allusion to the opening of The Big Sleep, saying "I was neat, clean, alert and going to the back door."

Two important series regulars make their first appearances here, along with one frequently recurring character. The most important is Susan. At first sight, Spenser describes her thusly: Susan Silverman wasn't beautiful, but there was a tangibility about her, a physical reality that made the secretary with the lime green bosom seem insubstantial. She had shoulder length black hair and a thin dark Jewish face with prominent cheekbones. Tall, maybe 5'7", with black eyes. It was heard to tell her age but there was a sense about her of intelligent maturity which put her on my side of thirty.

Spenser's Indian?

Next is Henry Cimoli, ex-fighter and proprietor of the Harbor Health Club. In the first book, Spenser worked out at the Boston YMCA. Henry appears in or is at least mentioned in almost every book for the rest of the series.

The recurring character is Lieutenant Healy of the State Police, who will pop up many times in the years to come, and prove a staunch ally. Here we learn that he once had a try-out with the Phillies, and may have signed with them if he hadn't joined the army and gone to war.

At one point Healy asks Spenser if he knows anything about horses. "Only what I read in the green sheet," Spenser replies. Seems to me that somewhere later in the series he tells Susan that he was raised around horses.

Spenser is still into woodcarving. On her first visit to his apartment, Susan compliments his carving of an Indian, like the statue "in front of the museum." One of these days I'll get to Boston and be on the lookout for that guy.

A lot of  names are dropped here. Some belong to such immortals as Groucho, Bogart, John Wayne and Kit Carson, and others to such lesser lights as Jackie Susann, Rod McKuen and Bobby Riggs.

The book title pops up at 2:35 in the morning, during the last dregs of a party, when Billie Holiday sings "God save the child that's got his own."

Forgotten Books: THE GODWULF MANUSCRIPT by Robert B. Parker (1974)

I’ve read The Godwulf Manuscript many more times than I can remember, certainly more times than any other book (and listened to the audio book many times too) and I never get tired of it. The reason for that repetition is that I keep reading and listening to the “complete” Spenser saga every few years. Each time I take that journey there are more books in the series, but I always start with the first, and this is it.

What struck me this time is how strongly the style of this book was influenced by The Continental Op. As it says on the dust jacket, Parker did his dissertation on the works of Chandler and Hammett. I had always seen the influence of both writers in his work, but over the past year I‘ve been studying the Op style very closely for projects of my own (the first of those, a story called “The Continental Opposite“ recently sold to AHMM) and it’s gotten into my blood. I was pleased to see it in Parker’s blood too.

Though Spenser has his Marlowe moments, his overall tone and attitude is much more Oppish, and Parker steered clear of the Chandleresque similes that other writers turned into parody.

Parker also borrowed a major plot element from the second Op novel, The Dain Curse. Like the Op, Spenser must rescue a young woman from a wacko cult bent on performing abominations on their initiates. In The Dain Curse it was The Temple of the Holy Grail. In this book it’s called The Temple of Moloch.

The most obvious hat tip to Chandler is Spenser’s first love interest, a woman named Brenda Loring. She’s clearly a literary descendant of Linda Loring, the woman Marlowe met in The Long Goodbye, and married sometime between Playback and the unfinished “Poodle Springs” story. Parker, of course, later finished Chandler's story, and it was published as the novel Poodle Springs in 1989.

At this stage, Spenser’s character is not fully formed. While he never becomes allergic to alcohol, he drinks more here than he probably does in the rest of the series all together. On one stakeout alone he consumes a dozen cold MacDonald’s hamburgers and a pint of Wild Turkey. In this book he also has a hobby - woodcarving. The carving is mentioned briefly in the second novel, and alluded to in a couple more, but after that it’s quietly dropped.

Other elements, though, are here to stay, like Spenser's joy of cooking, and the characters of Boston cops Martin Quirk and Frank Belson. (Susan Silverman makes her first appearance in book two, and Hawk in book four.)

Forgotten Books: SEVEN SAMURAI (aka Potshot) by Robert B. Parker

This book is only ten years old, which doesn’t really qualify it to be Forgotten. But it’s what I’m reading at the moment, and my excuse is that I’d forgotten its obvious homage to The Seven Samurai.

Having seen this story played out in so many films and TV shows (the silliest I can remember was Message From Space), it’s become an archetype or a fable. Still, when I read this ten years ago - and again now - I was surprised to see Parker having fun with it. And he did have a hell of a lot of fun.

The set-up is this: Spenser visits the small desert resort town of Potshot to investigate a murder, and the most likely suspects are a gang of forty outlaws who live out in the hills and prey on the town. It ain’t long before the town fathers ask him to hire a gang of mercenaries and do away with the bad guys.

The homage is most obvious when someone mentions there are seven members in Spenser’s crew, as in the following exchange:

     “We’ll protect you,” I said.
     “Seven of you.”
     “Not all of us at once,” I said. “We try to be fair.”

But the real clincher is the way Parker manipulates the plot to include the obligatory “journey.”  Instead of making phone calls to his friends and asking them to come on down, Spenser, as sensei, travels the country to personally assemble the gang. For no other reason, he returns to Boston to recruit Hawk and Vinnie Morris. Then, with Susan in tow, flies to Georgia to invite Tedy Sapp, to Las Vegas for Bernard J. Fortunato, and to L.A. for Chollo and Bobby Horse. While in L.A. he does do some investigating that later proves necessary to solving the case, but it seems more a byproduct than a reason for the trip.

In the end of most versions of the story, at least one of the heroes has to die - just to show us (wink, wink) that this is serious business and not heroic fantasy. In this case, the short straw falls to Bobby Horse. While he doesn’t die, he takes a crippling shot to the knee, which for a professional tough guy seems even worse.

For more Forgotten Books, round up your six best friends and bop on over to pattinase.

Forgotten Books: Family Honor by Robert B. Parker

Ten years ago, when I read this book for the first time, I remember thinking, Jeez, this is just Spenser with breasts. It was a weird experience. Sunny Randall's narrating voice is identical to Spenser's, so I'd get sucked in for a moment, then shoved right out when she'd think about some guy having a cute butt or wonder if she should carry her gun in bra.

The supporting cast, too, are clones. Instead of Hawk, Sunny has Spike the tough gay guy. Instead of Pearl the wonder dog she has Rosie the bull terrier. Instead of Susan she has ex-husband Ritchie, whom she loves but can't live with (and to add to the derivation game, Ritchie is also a clone for Jesse Stone's ex-wife Jenn). 

Even the plot of this one is a Spenser rip-off. Sunny saves the daughter of a client from prostitution (like Spenser tried to do with April Kyle) and ends up adopting her (like Spenser did with Paul Giacomin). And so on.

All this was so distracting I had a hard time appreciating the book for what it was, and was not eager to read the next in the series. But I did. And eventually the rest, until I'd finished all six. As Sunny came fully into Spenser's world, sharing the stage with Quirk, Belson, Healy, Gino Fish, Tony Marcus and even Susan, the series became more fun. And when she crossed over into a couple of books in the Jesse Stone series, it was obvious Parker was having fun too. And along the way, Sunny grew into her own character.

Now, reading Family Honor for the second time, it's a different experience. This is a great read. I'm sad there will be no more books in the series, but I'm damn glad to have six, and look forward to reading them all again.

You may have heard that Parker wrote this book especially for Helen Hunt. It's true. Here's the story in Parker's own words, from a 2000 interview with bookreporter.com:

What happened was that Joan and I were in Los Angeles in 1997. I received a call from John Calley, the CEO of SONY Pictures, who wanted to know if I would be interested in listening to a proposal. It seemed that Helen Hunt wanted a female Spenser-type character to be used as a vehicle for her production company for one or more movies. Joan and I met with John, Helen, and Amy Pascal, who was President of Columbia Pictures at the time, in John’s office on the old MGM lot in what used to be Louie Meyer’s office. I won’t pretend that Joan and I are so sophisticated that we were not impressed by being picked up in a limousine and transported to a movie lot which is full of history and sitting in on a meeting like that! Anyway, I entered into an agreement with Ms. Hunt’s production company, and Sunny Randall was created soon thereafter. I wrote FAMILY HONOR and a film based on the book is in the planning stage, though I am not entirely sure what is happening with it at this point. My publisher, however, liked FAMILY HONOR and asked for more. The result of that is PERISH TWICE. 

The Helen Hunt film, as you are no doubt aware, was never made. Too bad. It might have been a good 'un.

Tune into pattinase for this week's glorious lineup of Forgotten Books.

Robert B. Parker and the Future of Western Fiction

Did he make an impact? I don't know, but it would be nice to think so.

I just finished Blue-Eyed Devil, the fourth (and last?) book in the Cole & Hitch series. I enjoyed every word, of course, just like I every other Parker novel so far in print. And I have to wonder . . . Will his five Westerns have any lasting effect on the field?

Stuck in the Dallas airport for a layover recently, I visited a bookstore and checked out the Western section. Their stock consisted of 48 titles by Louis L'Amour (yep, I counted) and two by Parker. To me, that seems like real progress. For booksellers to think anybody other than L'Amour (or Zane Grey or Max Brand) is worth stocking represents a change in their thinking.

Hopefully, Parker's Westerns will be reprinted and kept on the racks for some years to come. Will they inspire other popular authors to jump the fence and give the genre a try? Will they prompt others to emulate Parker's style? Will his publisher or estate seek out another writer to continue the Cole & Hitch series?

Again, I don't know. But he definitely shined a little light on the genre, and that can't hurt!