NOW & THEN: A Spenser Novel
Robert B. Parker
Putnam
Mystery
ISBN: 9780399154416

• Read an Excerpt

In 1971 a college professor with a doctorate in literature wrote a mystery novel featuring a Boston private eye with no first name called Spenser. America during Vietnam was already a world removed from the days of Raymond Chandler and pulp fiction and post-World War II hard-boiled film noir. So there were probably not a lot of expectations for the book.

But now, 36 years and 34 books later, Robert B. Parker has written the 35th Spenser novel, NOW & THEN. Parker is the acknowledged dean of American mystery writers. And Spenser’s place in the pantheon of American fictional detectives is assured for all time, right up there with Chandler’s Marlowe, Macdonald’s Archer and Hammett’s Sam Spade.

For those of us who have been longtime fans of the series, a new Spenser novel is like a yearly visit from an old friend. We look forward to hearing the latest adventure of Spenser, his love Susan and his faithful sidekick Hawk. And if our memories are good enough, we can mark the milestones of our lives by these books. The Spenser titles are so good that they resonate over time. They will be read forever, much like Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

NOW & THEN does not disappoint. And there is a new treat when you open this book’s cover: a map of Spenser’s Boston. Now those of us not familiar with the city can see exactly where Spenser’s office is on Berkeley Street and its distance from the Four Seasons Hotel and the Harbor Health Club. I am sure some enterprising Boston tour guides must be offering Spenser tours by now, just as there are Sam Spade tours of San Francisco and Al Capone tours of Chicago.

The book begins as so many Spenser stories do --- right in that office when a client appears. A distraught man wants to find out if his wife is cheating on him. Spenser does not like divorce work because, he says, it makes him “feel like a Peeping Tom.” But something in the man’s demeanor drags up painful memories for the detective of the time over 20 years earlier when Susan briefly left him for another man.

Fans of the series will immediately flash back to the classic Spenser novel A CATSKILL EAGLE. It doesn’t take long for Spenser and Hawk to find concrete evidence, including an x-rated audio tape, that the man’s wife is indeed having a rather energetic affair with another man. But there is something else on the tape. Spenser learns that his client is an FBI agent, and his wife is passing on information about terror groups to her lover.

So Spenser decides to keep investigating. The case appears to be over when the wife is brutally assassinated on her way to work, and the FBI agent’s body is found floating in the water a few days later. But it is not that easy for the detective to let it go.

As the FBI special agent in charge tells Spenser:

“‘We agreed that you operated under the illusion that you’re Sir Lancelot.’

‘Explains why my strength is as the strength of ten,’ I said.

‘That was Galahad,’ Epstein said.

‘Wow, a literate bureaucrat.’”

But the truth is that Spenser does operate on his own moral code. And that has been constant throughout the series. The private dick with the heart of gold, he is a tough guy who is not cynical or jaded. He simply cannot let the case go because, he says, “I shouldn’t let clients get murdered without doing something about it.”

So he lets the killer know he has the incriminating tape, which means not only using himself as bait, but also possibly endangering the love of his life, Susan. Plus, he has to ask himself if he is really after justice for the slain FBI agent or revenge for what happened to him years before when Susan left him.

There is a little less violence and gunplay in this Spenser book than in some of the others. But this is more a psychological study of an admittedly aging hero. Spenser says at one point, “It was dark out, and when I looked out the window all I could see was my own reflection. I didn’t look old, exactly, maybe a little weathered, sort of. Like a guy who had seen too many bodies. Heard too many lies. Fired too many shots. Swapped too many punches.”

That is about as introspective as Spenser is ever going to get. But Parker has accomplished a remarkable feat with this series: he has kept these stories as fresh as they were three decades ago. And he has done that through great writing.

All the elements we expect are present in NOW & THEN. We find the short chapters and snappy dialogue. But even longtime readers and this professional writer can find new things that astonish and delight.

For example, Parker will insert a line of physical description to underline the mood of the scene. When Susan confronts the killer, Parker writes, “Through the front window I could see an inconsequential flurry of snow drift past.” A warning perhaps of the storm to come.

Finally there is the sheer poetry Parker achieves when he writes about the Spenser/Susan relationship. Spenser says, “I was driving, Susan besides me. It was dark. The wipers were moving gently. It embodied most of what I wanted in life, alone with Susan, going someplace, protected from the rain.”

We can only hope that Parker can keep them going for many more years to come. Reading NOW & THEN is like listening to a great jazz performer at the top of his game on stage. After it’s over, you feel fortunate to have been in the room. We have been lucky to be able to read Robert B. Parker for all these years.

    --- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

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