Watch it Free: SPENSER FOR HIRE (1985-88)

I watched this show (most likely all of it) when it ran for three season between 1985 and 1988. Memory tells me it was fairly high-quality TV private eye fare, up there with The Rockford Files and Magnum, P.I.. You know what I mean. Good, but not exceptional. Nowhere near as good as the books, still a bit above average. 

Well, I just watched an episode, for the first time since 1988 - on IMDbTV - and found my memory had served me well. It was exactly that, and nothing more. Still, to Parker fans, especially uberfans like me, it has its attractions. (Want to watch it on IMDbTV? I'll tell you how down below.)

I'm basing this on a single episode, mind you, the first official episode of Season 1, called "No Room at the Inn," but I expect it will be no more or less special than the 63 episodes to follow. I'll be watching some of them, and if I'm wrong you'll hear about it. 

The casting is OK. Robert Urich (as Spenser) could be a little bigger, Susan Silverman could be little more Jewish, Quirk could be taller and Belson could be seedier, but they're pretty much par for the course. The only gem in the cast is Avery Brooks as Hawk (You may know him as Capt. Benjamin Sikso from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). He's right on target, and deserving of his own show, which he got - briefly - in the 13 episode spin-off A Man Called Hawk in 1989. 

The story was acceptable, the setting was good (some filming was done in Boston and some in L.A.) and the character relationships were about right. The only real problem is Spenser's dialogue - and, as an extension of that - his narration. Unlike Ace Atkins, who's doing a fine job on the current novels, the writer had no feel for Parker's humor. It's standard TV stuff, with none of the Spenser sparkle. 

There was one nice Inside Baseball moment. Spenser goes into a building to question a desk clerk, and the guy is reading a paperback copy of Wilderness. That was Parker's first non-Spenser novel, I believe, and one that's dang near forgotten today.

The three TV movies made between 1999 and 2001 with Joe Mantegna fared better, no doubt because Parker was directly involved. Mantegna was also narrating the audiobooks produced at the time, and had a good feel for the character. 

Now, you're no doubt aware, there's a Netflix movie called Spenser Confidential with Mark Wahlberg in the title role. Since I'm too cheap for Netflix, I don't expect to see it for a while, and have no idea what to expect. It's based on an Ace Atkins novel, though, so if there's enough of Ace's Parker voice in it, it could be good.

IMDbTV, I recently discovered, is a free streaming service piggy-backed on the IMDb website. IMDb has info on everything, of course, but they now have a growing number of films and TV shows you can watch right on their site. This is one of them. But it's a little tricky. Here's how:

After you've signed up for a free IMDbTV account, search for the show, and look for the big yellow tab that says "Watch Free on IMDbTV."

That should bring up a list of episodes. After a brief delay, links should appear beneath each available episode, reading, again, (in tiny type) "Watch Free on IMDbTV." You'll note there is no link beneath the pilot episode, "Promised Land," so that one is presumably not available. But there is one beneath the first regular episode, "No Room at the Inn," and beneath every other episode in Season 1. Click one of those links, and it should start the show.

Give it a try. Once past the initial user-unfriendliness, it works great.

Forgotten Stories: The one and only SPENSER short by Robert B. Parker (1982)

I've been reading the Spenser series since the early '80s. I've been through the whole run several times, in both in print and audio, and I'm still enjoying the Ace Atkins efforts of the past few years. Though Red Harvest remains my single favorite book, Parker is my favorite writer, and the Spenser saga is my favorite series. I've heard everyone else's reasons for why they dropped out at one time or another, and they don't faze me at all. All of which goes to say that I identify as a Spenser superfan.

So how the heck did it get to be 2017 before I found out Parker had written a Spenser short story way back in 1982? Beats me! I just happened to see a short story listed on a Parker bibliography (not identified as a Spenser) and tracked down a copy of its first reprinting, in the 1991 anthology New Crimes 3. To my further embarrassment, I now find it was reprinted yet again in Boston Noir 2: The Classics in 2012.

"Surrogate," which runs 12 pages in the New Crimes 3, begins with a phone call from Brenda Loring, who reports that a man has broken into her home an raped her for the second time in two weeks. Brenda, you may recall, (related at least spiritually to Linda Loring, the woman Philip Marlowe met in The Long Goodbye and married in "The Poodle Springs Story") was the woman Spenser was dating in his first novel, The Godwulf Manuscript, back in 1973. She made only a couple more appearances before being aced out by Susan Silverman. 

In "Surrogate," we learn that Brenda has since been unhappily married and divorced. Spenser calls Hawk for help, and, with their usual aplomb, they bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion. No, it's not particularly great stuff, and it's not essential to the canon, but it is a genuine Spenser story, and to a superfan like me, cannot be ignored. This is me not ignoring it. 

The story was first published in a signed and numbered edition, limited to 300 copies, in 1982. The book, based on pics and descriptions found online, was a rose-colored hardcover with a gun motif on the boards (you be the judge), and a rose-colored dust jacket (at top) bearing a charcoal drawing of Brenda Loring. Is it ugly? I think so, but YBTJ. 50 of those copies were considered "deluxe," with a leather spine and blue cloth slipcase. 

I'm relying on internet pics and descriptions because the regular edition now commands between $400 and $1000, and two folks offering the deluxe job are asking $2500. Superfan yes, superrich no.

Forgotten Books: GOD SAVE THE CHILD by Robert B. Parker (1974)

Some notes on my umpteenth reading of the second novel in the Spenser series, published forty years ago:

In a recent post on the series premiere, The Godwulf Manuscript (HERE), I noted that Spenser sounded more like The Continental Op than like Philip Marlowe. In this novel, at least in the beginning, he seems to have softened a little, sounding more like Lew Archer than the Op.

There are, however, some great Marlowe-like lines. In describing his client, whose clothes were obviously picked out by his wife, Spenser notes he "looked as happy as a hound in a doggie sweater."

And there are hat tips to several of Spenser's literary predecessors. In accepting the client's check, he tries to act nonchalant, as if "maybe I'd buy some orchids with it." When asked his name, he answers, "Nick Charles." Another character sarcastically calls him Sherlock Holmes, and  a few pages later he annoys a snooty Assistant Principal named Moriarty. Arriving at his client's house, he makes an allusion to the opening of The Big Sleep, saying "I was neat, clean, alert and going to the back door."

Two important series regulars make their first appearances here, along with one frequently recurring character. The most important is Susan. At first sight, Spenser describes her thusly: Susan Silverman wasn't beautiful, but there was a tangibility about her, a physical reality that made the secretary with the lime green bosom seem insubstantial. She had shoulder length black hair and a thin dark Jewish face with prominent cheekbones. Tall, maybe 5'7", with black eyes. It was heard to tell her age but there was a sense about her of intelligent maturity which put her on my side of thirty.

Spenser's Indian?

Next is Henry Cimoli, ex-fighter and proprietor of the Harbor Health Club. In the first book, Spenser worked out at the Boston YMCA. Henry appears in or is at least mentioned in almost every book for the rest of the series.

The recurring character is Lieutenant Healy of the State Police, who will pop up many times in the years to come, and prove a staunch ally. Here we learn that he once had a try-out with the Phillies, and may have signed with them if he hadn't joined the army and gone to war.

At one point Healy asks Spenser if he knows anything about horses. "Only what I read in the green sheet," Spenser replies. Seems to me that somewhere later in the series he tells Susan that he was raised around horses.

Spenser is still into woodcarving. On her first visit to his apartment, Susan compliments his carving of an Indian, like the statue "in front of the museum." One of these days I'll get to Boston and be on the lookout for that guy.

A lot of  names are dropped here. Some belong to such immortals as Groucho, Bogart, John Wayne and Kit Carson, and others to such lesser lights as Jackie Susann, Rod McKuen and Bobby Riggs.

The book title pops up at 2:35 in the morning, during the last dregs of a party, when Billie Holiday sings "God save the child that's got his own."