History Literature / Spenser

* RaisedByDudes: Spenser has pointed out, several times, that after his mother died, it was up to his father and uncles to take care of him; this included teaching him how to hunt, cook, and do houswork. If it needed to be done, ''it got done''.

Parker died in 2010. Following his death, mystery novelist Ace Atkins was hand-picked by Parker's family to continue the Spenser series. His last novel was ''Bye Bye Baby'' in 2022. Reportedly, Mike Lupica will pick up where Atkins left off.

Parker died in 2010. Following his death, mystery novelist Ace Atkins was hand-picked by Parker's family to continue the Spenser series. His first Spenser novel is 2012's ''Lullaby''.

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: The play "Handy Dandy" [[InvokedTrope featured in]] ''Walking Shadow'' is extremely confusing and obtuse, and when interviewing the playwright Leonard O (who proves to be an enormous snob) about the case, Spenser lampshades it to hell and back and manages to catch O off guard when he points out that he stole the Tiresias stuff from Creator/TSEliot. O insists it was a "homage" but Spenser isn't fooled.

* TheVerse: All Parker's books are in the same 'verse and, while neither Sunny Randall nor Jesse Stone actually work with Spenser, they see him at a distance and meet many members of his supporting cast. Susan was Sunny's therapist for a while.

* SaltAndPepper: Spenser and Hawk, lampshaded by the characters to hell and back.

* ArtisticLicenseLaw: In ''Hugger Mugger'', [[spoiler:Penny gets away with murder. However, she freely admits in front of a police officer that she had her sisters held against their will in the family house, ostensibly to help them "dry out" and get away from their bad husbands]]. This is ''kidnapping'', no matter how you spin it, but no one seems to notice that [[spoiler:she]] just admitted being guilty of a crime that carries almost as severe a penalty as murder. This is somewhat justified, however, in that [[spoiler: the Clive family wields a lot of financial and social power in the area, and Penny's admission is meant to be seen by the reader as the first crack in her armor. The cops are going to get her for ''something'', sooner or later, if not necessarily this.]]

** In ''Hugger Mugger'' Spenser meets a lesbian in Georgia who runs such an enterprise, though she sends out the problem girls to do blow jobs at truck stops ([[spoiler:which is what Stonie did as revenge to her husband]]) From the same book, [[spoiler:Dolly]] describes herself as a courtesan, and when asked [[spoiler:how she knows that her son Jason's father was Walter Clive]] her response is "I was a courtesan. I am not a whore."

* {{Hypocrite}}: Lillian Temple in ''Hush Money'', a somewhat pompous and disdainful leftist academic Spenser encounters while investigating why his client, a conservative-leaning African-American, was denied tenure by the university. Even after Spenser uncovers evidence that she deliberately sabotaged his tenure hearing because she didn't consider him politically correct enough [[spoiler: by lying that he was having a homosexual affair with a student despite having ample reason to believe that he was heterosexual -- because she was cheating on her boyfriend with him]], he still marvels that she manages to find a way to twist the situation so that she can act with pious self-righteousness about it.

* PsychoSidekick: Hawk is the TropeCodifier. Especially when he [[spoiler: kills the physically powerless villain in ''Early Autumn'']]. He mellows ''considerably'' as the books go on, although most of it is expressed via a good-humored willingness to play things Spenser's way. ''Cold Service'', on the other hand, is a stark reminder of how ruthless he actually is.

* AuthorTract: In many ways, the series deals heavily with Parker's ideas of how people ought to live and how a man ought to act, as indicated via Spenser's actions and narration. This is about half an author tract and half Parker trying very deliberately to echo Raymond Chandler's ideas about how the private-eye genre should work; Spenser is in many ways the "man of honor" from Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder."

** Paul Giacomin, Spenser's adopted son, took a career path that roughly parallels that of Parker's son Daniel.

* OutDamnedSpot: In ''Mortal Stakes'', Spenser quotes Shakespeare when washing his hands of the blood of two mob men he was forced to kill. Earlier, he threw up right after he killed them. He also threw up after being forced to kill a pimp in cold blood in ''A Catskill Eagle''.

From 1999-2001, A&E produced a trilogy of TV movies starring Creator/JoeMantegna as Spenser and Creator/MarciaGayHarden as Susan, with Parker adapting the films himself. In 2020, {{Creator/Netflix}} released ''Film/SpenserConfidential'', an extremely lose adaptation of Ace Atkins' ''Wonderland'', starring Creator/MarkWahlberg, with Creator/WinstonDuke as Hawk.

* DeadpanSnarker: Spenser, as well as almost every member of his supporting cast. With very few exceptions, the most notable of which is Vinnie Morris, being a complete wiseass is shorthand in a Parker novel for being extraordinarily competent. Any characters without senses of humor, or who take themselves too seriously, always seem to end up being antagonists.

* RealMenCook: Spenser cooks at home, to an almost restaurant-level quality; contrast to [[CharacterizationMarchesOn Susan]] who is implied in later books to be capable of burning water.

** Characters from the Spenser series often show up in Parker's other novels. Both Literature/JesseStone and Literature/SunnyRandall have appeared in Spenser's stories, while most of Spenser's supporting cast have shown up in those books. Spenser himself has yet to do more than get referred to outside of his own series, perhaps owing to the issue concerning his name.

* SmartPeoplePlayChess: Played with. Spenser is talking to Del Rio and Chollo about a case he's on, and they are playing chess as he is talking to them, taking their time between moves and nodding at what the other does. However, his internal monologue reveals: "I didn't play chess. I had no idea what they were doing".

* StraightGay: Tedy Sapp is an ex-Airborne weightlifter and nightclub bouncer with a black belt in karate, and on par with both Spenser and Hawk for sheer badass potential. He actually dyes his hair a very bright blond in order to gay himself up a bit. (He explains that it's to help the bar's clientele trust him as a bouncer.)

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Spenser and Susan have a ''remarkably'' rich sex life.

* CharacterizationMarchesOn: The three primary characters, Spenser, Susan, and Hawk, all evolve gradually over the course of the series. Hawk in particular is notable, as he comes off as [[AngryBlackMan much angrier]] in the earlier novels. Spenser is far more world-weary in early books, particularly in ''Promised Land'', where his irritation at the prospect of tracking down yet ''another'' runaway wife due to her sudden discovery of [[StrawFeminist 1970s-style radical feminism]] gets him in a fight with Susan. He also inexplicably loses his interest in fine cigars and woodworking after the first few books, although the former habit occasionally appeared in Robert Urich's depiction of the character. Susan's complete inability to cook is a relatively late addition.

The Spenser novels are a long-running series of detective stories by Creator/RobertBParker, starring the eponymous private eye. Based in Boston with frequent excursions to other areas, the novels were much more experimental early on before settling into a comfortable niche (or, as [[BrokenBase some might say]], rut). The series is one of the most popular and influential modern works both inside and outside its genre (it is, most notably for this particular wiki, a large influence on both Creator/PeterDavid and ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''), and Parker has been called the modern successor to Creator/RaymondChandler.

From 1999-2001, A&E produced a trilogy of TV movies starring Creator/JoeMantegna as Spenser and Creator/MarciaGayHarden as Susan, with Parker adapting the films himself. In 2020, Creator/Netflix released ''Film/SpenserConfidential'', an extremely lose adaptation of Ace Atkins' ''Wonderland'', starring Creator/MarkWahlberg, with Creator/WinstonDuke as Hawk.