http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/01/19/crime-writer-robert-b-parker-rip-1932-2010/Robert B. Parker, the crime writer best known for his Spenser detective series, died today at the age of 77. Fittingly for a writer who published several books a year — many of which routinely made best-sellers lists — Parker is said to have died at his desk.
Parker was born in Springfield, Mass., and much of his fiction centered around the Boston area, most notably the Spenser series, which began in 1973 with the publication of “The Godwulf Manuscript.” The books later formed the basis of the ’80s TV show “Spenser: For Hire,” starring Robert Urich as the private eye. (Read a 2009 WSJ interview with Parker about his work.)
The New Yorker took note of Parker’s propensity for having Spenser whip up elaborate meals. As Adam Gopnik wrote: “The beans alone establish Spenser’s credibility as a cook. ‘I shelled the beans from their long, red-and-cream pods and dropped them in boiling water and turned down the heat and let them simmer,’ he tells us. A devotion to shell beans, I have noticed, divides even amateur cooks from non-cooks more absolutely than any other food, and they are, into the bargain, a perfect model of writing.”
In recent years, another Parker character, washed-up baseball player and former LAPD detective Jesse Stone, has been adapted for the small-screen, with Tom Selleck playing the role of Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies. Actor Ed Harris was also a Parker fan, adapting his 2005 Old West novel “Appaloosa” into a film starring himself, Viggo Mortensen and Renee Zellweger.
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