Spenser (character) - Fictional Biography

Fictional Biography

Spenser was born in Laramie, Wyoming and is a Boston 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 one woman (Susan Silverman). Although he is an ex-boxer (who likes to remind readers that he once fought the former heavyweight champ Jersey Joe Walcott) and lifts weights to stay in shape, he also is quite well educated, cooks, and lives by a code of honor he and Susan discuss occasionally—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. Spenser served as an infantryman in the 1st Infantry Division during the Korean War. Unlike Parker, however, Spenser hardly grows older. He was 37 when introduced in The Godwulf Manuscript and is now (mid-October 2006) some 49½ years old, according to the "Bullets-and-Beer formula", aging 12½ years for about 36 years of real time. This requires some retconning—Spenser stopped making reference to his military service in the Korean War as an eighteen-year-old, as he did in the first novels — although in 2006's Hundred Dollar Baby Spenser mentions being on "R and R" in Japan before going back to the war, although exactly which war is not made clear.

The other major character in the Spenser novels is his close friend Hawk. An African American, Hawk is an equally tough but somewhat shady echo of Spenser himself. Hawk served in the French Foreign Legion and served in combat overseas. Hawk is a "Gun for Hire" who lives by his own personal code. Spenser and Hawk met as boxing opponents in a preliminary bout in the Boston Arena (now known as Matthews Arena). Each man believes he was the victor. 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, an invincible man of iron. Spenser and Hawk respect each other and are friends who each understands the other's philosophy of how to conduct themselves in life.

Spenser was a former State trooper assigned to the Suffolk County DA's Office (although some novels state that he also worked out of the Middlesex County DA's Office, for example in Walking Shadow and the pilot episode of Spenser: For Hire said he was a Boston Police detective), and regularly seeks help from (or sometimes butts heads with) Martin Quirk (originally a lieutenant, later a captain) of the Boston Police Department. Among his other police contacts are Sgt. Frank Belson and Detective Lee Farrell, both homicide investigators under Quirk's command; Healy, a captain of the Massachusetts State Police; and Samuelson, an LAPD lieutenant (later promoted to captain, as mentioned in Back Story). In Massachusetts each county District Attorney's office has a squad of State Police Detectives assigned to their office to conduct investigations of major crimes committed in their jurisdictions.

Scotch is Spenser's drink of celebration. This is mostly having to do with an encounter with a bear while bird hunting in his teens. Spenser seems to agree with William Faulkner's assessment of scotch — "that brown liquor which not women, not boys and children, but only hunters drank."

After his mother's death (which occurred prior to Spenser's birth — he was an emergency C-section), Spenser was raised by his father and two uncles (his mother's brothers), all of them carpenters, who do not appear in the series. Spenser received a football scholarship to Holy Cross, where he played strong safety. Spenser injured his knee and dropped out because he didn't have the funds to complete his schooling. He took up boxing, where he met Hawk and Henry Cimoli, the owner of a gym where Spenser and Hawk still work out. His family unit beyond his near-fraternal relationship with Hawk is essentially Susan Silverman, an unofficial foster son named Paul Giacomin, and a series of dogs named Pearl after Spenser's childhood dog of the same breed, a German shorthaired pointer. (Author Parker has been photographed on the Spenser series dustjackets with a dog matching his description of the Pearls.) Silverman, originally a high school guidance counselor, continues to assist Spenser in his cases after becoming a Harvard-trained Ph.D. psychologist. Giacomin, initially an awkward, unsocialized teenager, becomes a professional actor/dancer.