Spenser

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This article is about the fictional detective named Spenser, not Edmund Spenser, the English poet.

Image:Barbaraspenser.jpg Spenser (he never reveals his first name) is a fictional character in a series of detective novels by American mystery writer Robert B. Parker.

Spenser is a private eye in the mold of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, a smart-mouthed tough guy with a heart of gold. Unlike Marlowe, Spenser maintains a committed relationship with a woman (Susan Silverman). Although he is an extremely tough guy, an ex-boxer (who likes to remind readers that he once fought the former heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott) who lifts weights to stay in shape, he is also quite erudite, cooks, and lives by a code of honor he and Susan sometimes discuss -- though as infrequently as he can manage.

Spenser bears more than a passing resemblance to his creator, Robert B. Parker. Both are Bostonians, and both spent time in Korea with the U.S. Army. Unlike Parker, however, Spenser never grows older. (Comment: Not true. Spenser does age, but slowly. He was 38 when first introduced in The Godwulf Manuscript and is now 45, aging 7 years for about 30 years of real time. This requires some retconning -- Spenser no longer makes any reference to his military service in the Korean War as an eighteen-year old, as he did in the first novels.)

The other major character in the Spenser novels is his close friend Hawk (which is unlikely to be either of his real names), an equally tough but somewhat shady echo of Spenser himself. Hawk may be modeled on the sidekick in Book Five of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene; Artegal, the knight of justice, has a helper named Talus who is an invincible man of iron.

Spenser regular seeks help from (or butts heads with) Martin Quirk (originally a lieutenant, currently a captain) of the Boston Police Department. Among his other police allies are Frank Belson and Lee Farrell, both detectives under Quirk's command; Healy, a captain of the Massachusetts State Police; and Samuelson, a Los Angeles police lieutenant.

The Spenser books were the inspiration for the late-1980s TV series Spenser: For Hire starring Robert Urich, Barbara Stock and Avery Brooks. Several made-for-TV movies based upon the series followed in the early 1990s. In 1999, Joe Mantegna played Spenser in the first of three TV movies.

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