In Pursuit of Spenser Read Online Free PDF Page B

four of Seinfeld . Yes, that level of greatness.
    At the time of that signing, I had been reading the Spenser books since high school. Back in my mid-teens, I’d had to hunt them down, often in used bookstores, which is how I discovered so many backstreets in Boston and in Cambridge—hopping on and off subways to trek to yet another used bookstore in hopes of scoring a Parker or an Elmore Leonard, neither of whom enjoyed the kind of popularity that would befriend them just a few years later. And, in that relentless searching, I learned my city as much as I learned it on drives through the neighborhoods with my father or, later, as a floral delivery driver and then a chauffeur.
    Another way I learned the city was through the reading of the Spenser novels themselves. It was in Looking for Rachel Wallace , for example, where I was first introduced to Locke-Ober, a venerable institution of Old Boston, which is not something a kid from Dorchester would have ever learned about without help. It’s at Locke-Ober where Spenser meets with John Ticknor, an editor who wants Spenser to protect angry, unapologetic, lesbian feminist Rachel Wallace, who’s written a book that’s bringing her death threats. Ticknor warns Spenser that Rachel will hardly be an easy gig; Spenser and his testosterone-fueled code of ethics (or so Rachel presupposes) represent everything she’s hoping to dismantle in society. At one point, Spenser, ever the smartass, says something smartass and “Ticknor smiled again, but not like he wanted me to marry his sister.”
    Looking for Rachel Wallace was the first Parker book I read. And that line about Ticknor, which shows up on the third page, was the first line I read of Bob’s that made me sit up straight and laugh. I may have even flipped the book over in my hand to look at the cover again and ask, “Who is this guy?” There was something so immediately Bostonian about the understated sarcasm and the left field nature of the analogy. Bostonians care fairly little about your political, sexual, or religious affiliation but everything about whether you’re full of shit. Full of shit or full of yourself—those are cardinal sins in The Hub. And Parker, though a transplanted Mainer (but Mainers, flinty souls that they are, are possibly less tolerant of bullshit than Bostonians), was a Bostonian from the day he took his first teaching job at Northeastern.
    So I read on, and within another twenty pages, I knew something transformative was happening. It’s hard to remember now how revolutionary the early Spenser books were, but they were gate chargers and wall busters. Forstarters, they were politically and socially astute in a way that a lot of the more ham-fisted PI novels of the time weren’t. Spenser was a tough guy, a former cop and former boxer, and he was brave and nearly fearless and would sooner take two in the hat and two in the chest than betray his principles. In that way, he wasn’t much different than so many heroes of the genre who preceded him or ran alongside him as contemporaries. But Spenser was also well-read, articulate, a connoisseur of good food and fine wine, and, dare I say, sensitive. At the end of Looking for Rachel Wallace , for example, after he kills two gun thugs, he holds the woman he’s just rescued and cries , for God’s sake.
    Spenser deals with cases that challenge his preconceived notions (and maybe the preconceived notions of the genre, itself)—notions about feminism, gay rights, the educational system, parenting, religion—and often he is forced to reconsider those notions. That is the arc of each book—a journey to transformation. Spenser—no first name—so resolute in his code of ethics, is not, however, unyielding about the nuances of that code. So while his macro code never changes—always fight for those who can’t fight for themselves; never take a bribe and never take a knee; break your word for no one; to thine own self be true—the micro code can and