Beyond Spenser: Robert B. Parker’s World

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?” In the twilight of every year, these poignant words, written by Scots poet Robert Burns in 1788, come to the fore. What does this sentiment have to do with Robert B. Parker’s mysteries?  Parker didn’t just write about Spenser, the iconic, unforgettable Boston detective: he also gave us Sunny Randall, a private detective working in Boston (like Spenser) and Jesse Stone, a police chief in Paradise, a fictional town near Boston. Characters that readers came to know well, like Hawk, Spenser’s chief sidekick and exercise/sparring partner, as well as many other members of Spenser’s world, frequently show up for Sunny and Jesse. A perfect example: Sunny’s shrink is Susan Silverman, Spenser’s beloved longtime partner. 

I’ve been reviewing Robert B. Parker’s mysteries at Criminal Element since 2017. Parker died in 2010: he wrote 40 plus books before his passing and three were published posthumously. His estate decided to keep the party going—to have excellent writers pen Spenser and Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall mysteries—all echoing Parker’s distinctive voice. What a brilliant decision and how thankful are his many fans. 

I reviewed The Hangman’s Sonnet in 2017, written by Reed Farrel Coleman. It’s the 16th Jesse Stone mystery.  Police chief Stone is in a bad way, understandably since his fiancée was murdered by “crazed assassin Mr. Peepers.” He can’t disappear, much as he wants to, because he must stand up for his “loyal protégé, Suitcase Simpson” on Simpson’s wedding day.  Stone’s closest relationship is with Johnny Walker Black. His loyal team tries their darndest to prop him up, but to no avail. 

The shift is from functioning to not. Jesse misses clues and nuances, seemingly “a dollar short and a day late” when it comes to solving the case. Eventually, he goes back to basics. Every Jesse Stone story is a dance between how he did things in LA and how he chooses to be the Police Chief of Paradise.

 

“When you want the guy at the top, you start at the bottom of the totem pole and work your way up” is what Jesse’s first detective partner had said to him. It was advice he heeded every time he’d built a case against someone up the food chain. And that was just what he meant to do now.

Reed Farrel Coleman wrote The Bitterest Pill in 2019. Opioid addiction has come to Paradise—tragically a high school girl dies of an overdose. Stone sensed that as Paradise morphed into a desirable home for Bostonians, the days of unlocked doors in the neighborhood would be gone forever. As is so often the case with the Robert B. Parker oeuvre, characters we’ve met through Spenser have a way of showing up in Sunny and/or Jesse’s stories.

Characters in Robert Parker land never disappear (unless they die). There’s always a need for a “connected” guy, especially someone as well connected as mobster Vinnie Morris. Morris is a Cassandra when it comes to crime and punishment in Paradise. When Stone makes the trek to Morris’s warehouse, they sit at the bar, club soda and lime for Jesse, a “double pour of expensive bourbon” for Vinnie.

 

“What can I do for you, Jesse?”

 

“Not so long ago, you warned me that Boston’s crime would creep into Paradise. You were right. It’s arrived.”

 

“I like being right, but you didn’t drive down here to pat me on the back for being an oracle.”

Famous sportswriter Mike Lupica wrote Broken Trust, a Spenser mystery, in 2023. Spenser is a man out of step with the modern world but that doesn’t prevent him from solving murders in a high-tech, absurdly wealthy milieu. I wrote that “Readers recognize in Spenser an honorable man of a certain age who is challenged by a changing world. He misses everything from microfilm to former Red Sox Mookie Betts (a continuing theme).  With an ironic touch, Spenser articulates the pitfalls of changing mores.”  Psychologist Susan Silverman (the love of Spenser’s life) and their shared pet, Pearl the Wonder Dog, are part of the plot, much to everyone’s delight.

Alison Gaylin is the voice of the Sunny Randall series: the most recent book is Buzz Kill (2024). As longtime readers know, Sunny has had an on and off again relationship with Ritchie, her connected beau, forever, it seems. Can’t live with him, can’t live without him—when she’s with him she feels “hopeful and confused and nervous and content, all those conflicting emotions rushing back.”  A shared future is something Ritchie wants but does Sunny? She brings her questions to her shrink, Susan Silverman.

It seems like you understand each other, my shrink, Susan Silverman, had told me during my last visit.

 

We do, I’d replied. We always have. But does that mean we belong together?

 

That’s a question only you can answer, she had said, which hardly seemed fair, considering how much time and money I’d invested in her over the years.

Life isn’t always easy for private detectives; they lose clients and long-term associates to gunfire, murder, and suicide. Their families and friends are threatened—but Spenser and Randall soldier on, picking up new burdens along the way. Sunny is down after the traumatic events of Buzz Kill but she pulls herself together and thinks of the good she accomplished. Her thoughts on New Year’s Eve could have been said by Spenser or Jesse Stone, they’re emblematic of their resilience. Sunny thinks to herself, “One of the most important reasons to go on living is because we’re needed by others—others we love.” 

The next time you read a mystery set in the Robert B. Parker world, check out the cross-connections: they add a special dimension to the always fascinating plots.