ROBERT B. PARKER, 77

Crime novelist created 'Spenser' series

Robert B. Parker, the blunt and beloved crime novelist who helped revive and modernize the hard-boiled genre and branded a tough guy of his own through his "Spenser" series, died Monday of unknown causes at his Cambridge, Mass., home.

Prolific to the end, Mr. Parker wrote more than 50 novels, including 37 featuring Boston private eye Spenser. The character's first name was a mystery, with his last name emphatically spelled with an "s" in the middle, not a "c."

"I first got into him when I was a student and me and my friends heard about this writer who had these really cool books about a detective in Boston. You really had to seek them out at first," said Dennis Lehane, author of "Mystic River" and other Boston-based novels.

"He taught me how to be funny on the page. He taught me how to be succinct."

The character was the basis for the 1980s TV series "Spenser: For Hire," starring Robert Urich. Mr. Parker later said the only thing he liked about the program was the residual checks.

Mr. Parker admired Raymond Chandler and other classic crime writers and helped bring back their cool, clipped style in the first "Spenser" novel, "The Godwulf Manuscript," from 1973. Within a few years, with "Looking for Rachel Wallace" and "Early Autumn," he was acclaimed as a master in his own right.

"Hard-boiled detective fiction was essentially dead in the early '70s. It was considered almost a museum thing," said Ace Atkins, author of "Devil's Garden," "Wicked City" and several other novels. "When Parker brought out Spenser, it reinvigorated the genre."