Sat 22 May 2021
Reviewed by David Vineyard: ROBERT B. PARKER – Chasing the Bear.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[12] Comments
ROBERT B. PARKER – Chasing the Bear. Philomel Books, hardcover, 2009. Speak, paperback, 2010.
It is a Sunday in Boston, and on this particular one while Spenser and Susan Silverman sit on a bench in the Boston Public Garden, Spenser decides to open up about his childhood in the West with his father and three uncles. What follows once in a while almost evolves into a coming of age story, but mostly meanders from one incident to the next of Spenser being Spenser, just a younger version of himself with his Father and Uncles as his wingmen rather than Hawk.
The longest and most involving section involves a teen girl fleeing her abusive father (Jeannie Haden wasn’t my girlfriend. She was a girl who was my friend. We spent a lot of time together. Things were bad at home for her. Her mother and father were getting divorced, and they fought all the time. Jeannie was scared of her father. She only went home when she had to.), and Spenser helping her in the wilderness eventually killing the father. Of course nothing comes of this because the wise deputy is a friend of Spenser’s father, and the man was a near cartoon of an abusive father, so no one really cares a teenage boy killed him in self defense.
It is that kind of book, a Spenser novel in miniature, written for a juvenile audience to give a glimpse of Spenser’s formative years, but by the time the book opens he is already Spenser full blown, and whether protecting a girl from an abusive father or a new friend from racist thugs, only Hawk and the guns are missing.
You would expect in a Hemingwayesque novel of coming of age set in a rural Western setting (“Western Flub Dub†as Spenser describes it) some sense of the outdoors, scenes of hunting and descriptive passages of the world Spenser grew up in, but you barely get that. Like the later novels the book consists of mostly talk, a few descriptive passages of violence, and asides from Spenser about his past, but there is not much more to it than that.
Spenser is Spenser, Spenser kills a man, beats up some bullies, grows up, has a couple of adult conversations, casually mentions blowing a sports scholarship and goes to college. There is precious little about growing up without a mother or the other drawbacks of being raised by four hard fighting sem-literate fathers in the rural West. Characterization is so bare bones you couldn’t cast the characters in a film based on the bare detail provided.
Parker takes 37 chapters to do considerably less than Jim Harrison in the in the novella Legends of the Fall.
Before it starts, I loved Parker and Spenser when they debuted, and I stayed with them much longer than many others I know, but over time I just stopped enjoying the books. There was a sameness about them that I couldn’t remember if I had read one or not, too much cuteness with Susan, too much wisecracking with Hawk, one too many big fights that read like the big fight in the book before.
I recognize that the things I mention are why millions of readers read Parker and still read the continuing series by Ace Atkins and others, and more power to them. For me it was a camel’s backbreaking straw.
I had hoped this would actually give a little insight into Spenser (incidentally we still get no idea he has a first name, for all we find out his father called him Spenser), and sense of how he became the man he was, but instead the boy he was is exactly the same as the man he is, just younger and smaller and needing four Hawks instead of one.
I suppose growing up enough to only need one preternaturally capable killer is some sort of coming of age, but I really can’t imagine many young readers rushing to read this or many older readers being satisfied by it.
I still have great affection for Parker. I loved the early books and still do, loved the Robert Urich series, spent many happy hours with his works, but I can’t pretend the books didn’t wear thin as plot took a farther and farther place in the background.
Spenser even tears up a little at the end as Susan reminds him he has not left his family behind.
I felt my throat tighten for a moment. I nodded slowly.
“Yes,” I said. “With us.”
I only wish Parker had given us enough of a connection to the characters that the final touching tribute actually meant anything to the reader.
May 22nd, 2021 at 2:24 pm
This begs a question, which I will put to the group: When did the series jump the shark? I am quite certain there are differing opinions. If I remember correctly, I read the first nine volumes (through Ceremony) as a young man in the late 70s and early 80s. I loved them, so I am not sure at this distance why I did not keep on.
May 22nd, 2021 at 4:33 pm
As you suggest, Patrick, I’m sure everyone has a different answer to your question, whether they share it with us here or not. I have been told by at least one friend of mine that the only one he cared for was the first one. My daughter’s husband’s father liked them all, and I wonder if the Parker books were the only mysteries he read.
In your case, it was the first nine; the reason you did not keep on is that’s where the shark jumped for you. I remember reading the first 12 when they came out; after that it’s been hit or miss. No particular reason I can point to, though.
1. The Godwulf Manuscript (1973)
2. God Save the Child (1974)
3. Mortal Stakes (1975)
4. Promised Land (1976)
5. The Judas Goat (1978)
6. Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980)
7. Early Autumn (1980)
8. A Savage Place (1981)
9. Ceremony (1982)
10. The Widening Gyre (1983)
11. Valediction (1984)
12. A Catskill Eagle (1985)
13. Taming a Seahorse (1986)
14. Pale Kings and Princes (1987)
15. Crimson Joy (1988)
16. Playmates (1989)
17. Stardust (1990)
18. Pastime (1991)
19. Double Deuce (1992)
20. Paper Doll (1993)
21. Walking Shadow (1994)
22. Thin Air (1995)
23. Chance (1996)
24. Small Vices (1997)
25. Sudden Mischief (1998)
26. Hush Money (1999)
27. Hugger Mugger (2000)
28. Potshot (2001)
29. Widow’s Walk (2002)
30. Back Story (2003)
31. Bad Business (2004)
32. Cold Service (2005)
33. School Days (2005)
34. Dream Girl (2006)
aka Hundred-Dollar Baby
35. Now and Then (2007)
36. Rough Weather (2008)
36.5. Chasing the Bear (2009)
37. The Professional (2009)
38. Painted Ladies (2010)
39. Sixkill (2011)
39.5. Silent Night (2013) (with Helen Brann)
continued in the series by Ace Atkins
May 22nd, 2021 at 4:36 pm
As an addenda to the above, I read one of the Atkins books. I enjoyed it well enough, but when I was done, I asked myself why read ersatz Spenser when I have plenty of the real thing to read, pretty much whenever I want to.
May 22nd, 2021 at 6:04 pm
I quit after Pastime, I think, perhaps sooner than that, maybe Catskills Eagle. I was buying them as they came out, but I got rid of them before I moved to Oregon. The books just got thin, repetitive, there were other more interesting things to read.
May 22nd, 2021 at 7:14 pm
At times this almost reads as a parody of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories. I’m sure that wasn’t what Parker wanted, but that’s the effect you get. There is no point in the book where you connect with young Spenser as a child. Superboy is better characterized than Spenser in this, Billy Batson more believable and he lives alone.
These kind of Western, Mid-Western, and Southern rural coming of age books are a genre into themselves, and I couldn’t help but think reading this Parker should have read a few more of them to really get the feel for this kind of book.
Spenser learning a lesson from an older Spenser like character would at least have been interesting, but I suspect in Parker’s mind that would somehow have diminished Spenser.
But if I had to single out the biggest mistake Parker made here it is that his character is too self contained as a child. There is no sense of growth or of how he became Spenser. Parker’s admiration for his hero is such he can’t imagine he might ever have been less than he is and have to grow into the man he becomes.
Instead he is just a short underage version of his adult self without the byplay with Hawk and Susan, and I am honestly shocked I could read a Parker novel at this stage and miss the latter.
May 22nd, 2021 at 7:16 pm
I lasted through PALE KINGS AND PRINCES, after that the only Parker I read were the two Philip Marlowe novels, his Westerns, and one each of his later new series.
May 22nd, 2021 at 8:04 pm
I made it through A Catskill Eagle, I believe the next book went to a larger format (best seller) size and stayed that way through the rest of the series.
I probably should read the Atkins books, his Quinn Colson books are great, and he has knack for fleshing out his characters. Would be interesting to see if the books read like early Parker.
May 22nd, 2021 at 11:05 pm
I remember liking the first few novels, perhaps all the ones in the 1970’s. Maybe even a couple in 1980 through 1982. But then I developed a dislike for the series, especially I hated Susan and Hawk.
I think Parker should have moved on to stand alone detective novels or perhaps another short series starring a different character. Many of his readers became tired of Spenser, Susan, Hawk.
I know I did.
May 23rd, 2021 at 5:24 am
For me in a sense it was A Catskill Eagle, where I decided the plots were becoming too ridiculous (and came to despise Susan), and in a sense it was Not until the end. The only one I did not buy was Sixkill, as Spenser already had a perfectly good partner.
But I bought all the others. I really loved Hawk. I still go back and read the early ones, mostly for how it portrays the time period—such as Double knit leisure suits, or Spenser in a white linen three piece suit. Of course, I am old enough to remember when those were things.
May 23rd, 2021 at 8:59 am
I liked the first four, although each one a little bit less than the one before. I made it through two or three more and then stopped reading the series for a long time. Seven or eight years later, I picked up PASTIME, which had come out recently, read it, and thought it was okay. Backtracked and read the ones I’d missed and then wound up reading the rest of the series as the books came out. Most of them weren’t very good, but they were short and easy to read. Read the first Atkins books, thought it was a considerable improvement, but I haven’t read any since then. I think Parker’s best late novel is the stand-alone DOUBLE PLAY, where he seemed to be trying again.
May 23rd, 2021 at 3:08 pm
Robert Parker probably would have thought me a nincompoop a few notches shy of understanding his writing if I had had the opportunity to explain to him how I interpret his stories. After all, Parker said in an interview that he does not see Spenser inextricably tied to Boston and thought he could be equally at home in Houston. I scratched my head when I read that and thought, maybe there is something about the Spenser novels that I am not getting.
To me, Parker was a fellow Western-Mass boy who completed the pilgrimage to Boston. I even savored the later novels that blend together for lack of distinctness because Parker tapped into a view shaped by our shared upbringing. From one Spenser novel set in a small, Swift River Valley town in Western Massachusetts, I felt the slope of the street, which I knew well, as Spenser walked around town.
Autobiographical segments in Parker’s novel about Jackie Robinson where Bobby is listening in Springfield, Massachusetts seem authentic. While Raymond Chandler grew up in England and naming his detective Marlowe seems natural, Parker’s naming his detective Spenser seems tongue-in-cheek. This whole business about Spenser coming from Wyoming never fits for me but I was willing to admit that maybe I was not perceiving something.
When I began to read David Vineyard’s review of Spenser’s coming of age story, I thought, oh no this reviewer who has a strong sense of place is going to blow my own personal theory out of the water. In my own interpretation, the character told the author he was from out west, meaning the Connecticut River Valley, and Parker mistook it to mean Wyoming. From David’s review, the novella sounds as if Parker were trying to put a square peg in a round hole and my particular back-story holds.
As far as where Spenser calls home, I do not think Parker could push him any further west than the Berkshire Mountains.
May 23rd, 2021 at 6:48 pm
At least one Spenser novel takes him out West, but I agree with Daryl about Spenser and Boston, certainly the city was key to the early books and the series and was as unique to the books as Chandler’s LA or Mac’s Chicago in Thomas Dewey’s books.
I suspect the only reason Parker made Spenser a Westerner was to explain his violent upbringing and firearm skills he would likely not have learned in Boston without being in the military. I half took the whole Wyoming thing as Spenser and Parker putting us on somehow ashamed of Spenser being a poor working class kid from Boston.
I have to agree with the general consensus here re Susan and Hawk. The more Parker fell in love with Susan and Spenser’s Nick and Nora routine the worse things got until at times the books seemed to consist of nothing but Spenser riffing with Susan then Hawk, and then getting into a less and less likely epic fight where his and Hawk’s skills were so obviously superior to anyone else there was no suspense as to the outcome.
I never cared much for Susan, but I did like Hawk in the beginning, but as time went on and Avery Brooks brought the character to life on the small screen I kept wanting to see Parker do something more with him than just Spenser’s cool deadly buddy. It felt as if there was a story there that needed to be told more than Spenser’s unlikely childhood.
But I still remember why Parker became the mega selling imitated writer he did. Those early books were fresh and smart and combined the brains and language of Chandler to the violence and energy of Spillane. Granted it was probably impossible to sustain that for very long, but I still recall when I was excited by a new Spenser novel and could not imagine how tiresome they could become.