I’m reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series in semi-random order. They’re pretty formulaic but quite often provide a hearty belly-laugh or two. What I didn’t expect was this novel, which from the very beginning you can tell is somewhat different: there are long paragraphs, some which go on for half a page! This was the fourth book of his that I read, and I wasn’t truly familiar with his entire range yet; but I was so used to pages and pages of one-line wise-guy dialog that it seemed like I’d strayed somehow into another author’s work with the exact same characters.

This was Parker’s 20th novel, published in 1993, and it just had more weight to it that the later ones that I’d read so far: the plot, the psychological depth, and the just-plain-old drama and pathos (in the best sense of those words). Also, I’d already started catching the literary allusions, so when I got to the end of Chapter 45 and saw this line, I just had to look it up:

Human voices wake us, and we drown.

Sure enough, it’s also the last line of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock.” Not only was it completely appropriate to the action, but it pushed the over into it’s on special category.

Continuing on with his books, focusing for not particular reason on ones written in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I started noticing more an more literary allusions, and finally decided to see if someone had written anything about it. Sure enough, there’s an article in the Fall 2013 issue of the scholarly journal Clues:  “Literary Allusions in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser Series,” by Marty S. Knepper. (You can access the article through the ProQuest database here.)

As of today I’ve read twelve of the Spenser books, and have found that it’s not so uncommon to find flashes of depth and psychological insight woven into the tough-guy dialog and Male Gaze descriptions. I’m also aware, having read the Knepper article, that Parker actually has a PhD. in English from Boston University. Knowing that is too bad in a way because it makes the literary references much less mysterious and exotic.

Next I’m planning to go back to some of the earlier ones–but not right away. The one I finished last night was Back Story (number 30 in the series, published in 2003), and my guess he was getting tired. I certainly was; even his most reliable shtick seemed like he was phoning it in.