In Pursuit of Spenser Read Online Free PDF

a true Bostonian is, I sometimes feel, a lack of tolerance for rudeness. Being rude is very different from being impolite, which is good because Bostonians might be the least polite people in the Western Hemisphere. (Take that, Philadelphians.) But there’s an ocean of difference between the impolite and the rude. Rude is stepping on someone’s foot and not apologizing even when you realize your mistake. Impolite is someone saying, “Why’d you step on my foot and not fucking apologize, asshole?” Rude is cutting someone off in traffic, so they crash their car, and then driving off. Impolite is cutting someone off in traffic. Rude is taking two parking spaces. Impolite would be keying the car of someone who took two parking spaces. (And if you really want to be impolite you do what’s known as a “Dorchester key” and key both sides of the car.)
    Much like with pornography, you know the difference between the rude and impolite when you see it. I’ve often been accused of being impolite—so have most of my friends (usually when we’re visiting another state or dating a Yankees fan)—but I’ve only been accused of being rude once, and that was by some asshole who really meant I was being impolite but didn’t know how to pronounce three-syllable words.
    You don’t have to be from Boston to be a Bostonian. (See Damon, Matt; Affleck, Ben; and Leary, Denis.) And you can be from Boston and still not be a Bostonian. (You know who you are; or better yet, you don’t. But we do.) Robert B. Parker of Maine was a Bostonian. He loved tall tales and hated bullshit; he could be impolite but never rude; his favorite facial expression was deadpan; he knew exactly the word to italicize when he spoke; he had no time for phonies, people who put on airs, or people who, in the parlance of Old Boston, outgrew their hat sizes. I’m fairly certain he never used a smiley face emoticon.
    As I write this, a football game plays on a TV in the next room. It’s an exhibition game between the Patriots and the Lions and mostly meaningless for everyone but the players on the bubble who may or may not make the team. But I’ve left it on because I love the sounds of the thuds and the ref whistles and the white noise of the crowd. Also, possibly, because Patriots games remind me of Robert B. Parker, which, on the surface, could seem weird. Bob and I knew each other only casually. We enjoyed each other’s company the few times we ran into each other with enough time to have a quick drink, but we were acquaintances, not friends exactly. I knew very little about him beyond the standard biography available on his website or the back of a book jacket. I don’t know if he was a fanatic about football, I don’t know if heever played it, I don’t know much at all about him and his relationship, if any, to NFL entertainment. I just know that during Christmas season one year in the late ’90s, he and I shared a very satisfying moment together while watching a football game on TV. It was undoubtedly politically incorrect, and arguably involved the emotional abuse of a child. But it served to bring Bob and me together on a meeting of the minds so complete that I never felt I had to know much more about the man.
    I first met Bob Parker in the summer of 1984. I was eighteen and working for a bookstore in downtown Boston, and my manager had given me the responsibility of organizing a Parker book signing because she knew I was a fan of his work. The book, if memory serves, was Valediction , one of the great Spenser novels that fell in an amazing string of them, from The Judas Goat to Looking for Rachel Wallace to Early Autumn , A Savage Place , Ceremony , and The Widening Gyre . It’s a career run, actually, comparable to the Rolling Stones four-peat of Beggars Banquet , Let It Bleed , Sticky Fingers , and Exile on Main Street ; Dickens pulling off The Pickwick Papers , Oliver Twist , and Nicholas Nickleby back to back to back; and seasons two through