Kirkus Reviews calls "Pastime," Robert Parker's new Spenser novel, "rich in soul-satisfying macho action," and Cosmopolitan calls it "one of the sweetest hard-boiled crime novels ever."
"It just came out sweet and macho," Parker says with a laugh. "I didn't plan it that way."Spenser continues to evolve in his latest outing, his 19th, and this ongoing process of change may be responsible for his growing popularity among a wider range of readers. Parker denies that he is deliberately shooting for that treasured middle ground, however.
"I'm not really aiming at anything but to try and get the book written and be good. It's too hard to write if you're trying anything but to just get it written, you know?"
The subtext in "Pastime" is about fathers and sons and growing up, and for the first time Spenser talks about his youth and his first meeting with his friend and fellow tough guy, Hawk. The vignettes are few, but for diehard fans they provide tantalizing background.
Spenser shows signs of growing maturity as well, forgoing violence but never backing down from it. More and more, he looks for alternatives other than fights. Yet Parker discounts complaints that Spenser has been getting soft.
"I myself think the later books are better - that is, they just feel better to me in retrospect. I think they're about more, and I think probably that I like that he may be a bit less of a (wise-acre) and that he's dealing with more complicated issues.
". . . If I have to generalize about these things, I think he's probably learned that the answer to everything isn't a punch in the mouth. (I stole that from George Bernard Shaw, who said the American answer to everything is a punch in the jaw.)
"And maybe he has discovered that force has its place but other things matter, too, or he knows it better than he used to.
"Or maybe I've gotten old," he says, chortling. "There's always that."
Spenser's relationship with his sweetie, Susan Silverman, continues to grow in "Pastime," too.
"They think about their relationship, they experiment with their relationship," Parker says. "It has gone through its times of separation and difficulty.
"It seemed to me that heroes need to be able to slay something other than dragons, and it was during that phase of the relationship that there was a chance to see what Spenser did with the stuff that you couldn't punch."
Spenser will have more chances with "the stuff that you couldn't punch" in Parker's next novel, "Double Deuce," due out next summer.