Robert B. Parker has created Spenser, a Marlowe-like private eye who drinks a lot and makes tasty omelets, salad dressings, and women. In The Godwulf Manuscript (1973) he is inexplicably rude (Marlowe never is): to a university president who has been only courteous, he sneers, "Is there something you'd like me to detect or are you just polishing up your elocution for next year's commencement?" The detective is less interesting, however, than his antagonist, a small, weak, lecherous professor of medieval literature who early in the story is revealed to be also a radical, dope pusher, and murderer. This paragon is married to a huge, adoring woman who mothers him and eventually takes five bullets in the stomach so the little man can escape. He does. Spenser finds him cowering in the bathtub where he has wet himself in terror. Once under arrest, however, the medievalist revives and, assuming a lofty tone, lectures the police department on the brilliance of his criminal career. At this Boston university, administrators are phonies, professors cowardly murderers, and students (except the heroine) doped and mindless radicals. "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid," said Raymond Chandler, Parker's model; but Spenser, despite a certain vitality, doesn't quite make the grade, perhaps because all imitations are only imitations, perhaps because a tough guy who bullies presidents, deans, professors, and students just isn't tough enough.
Agate Nesaule Krouse and Margot Peters, "Murder in Academe" (reprinted by permission of the authors), in Southwest Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, Autumn, 1977, pp. 371-78.∗
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