Years ago, I read every Robert Parker mystery as soon as it came out in paperback. Then I continued to buy the books, without ever getting around to read them. After a long break, I just read three of them -- Thin Air, Paper Doll, and Chance, in rapid succession. Then I began to reflect on why I am so addicted to this author.
Parker's mysteries are like experiments in anthropology. He studies the moral codes of individuals and groups and tests those codes by bringing them into conflict with one another.
All the major good guys have their own personal codes.
Spenser's is elaborately drawn and tested.
Hawk's code is a bit foggy. He has lots of common ground with Spenser, but we know nothing about his past or and his non-Spenser-related activities are left in shadow. He is fiercely loyal to Spenser, as Spenser is to him, but it's implied that he oversteps the law, while in the shadows, and engages in activities and violence for hire that Spenser would not do himself. Much of power of his fear-inspiring presence comes from the knowledge that he is not restrained by the law or by a code as limiting as Spenser. He wouldn't hesitate to kill you if that's what he felt needed to be done.
Susan has her professional ethics and also the ethics of her relationship with Spenser. There are clear limits to what Susan and Spenser will do with and for and to one another. And that set of rules affects just how far Spenser will go in his macho flirtations with other women.
After about 15 years, now, of self-sustaining monogamy, Spenser and Susan still have not married, nor would marriage make any sense to either of them. They do not require the support of an external code. But they have in common an appreciation of one another's strong moral positions and enjoy discussing the moral complexity of situations (what they should do) and the likely behavior of other players based on an appreciation of and understanding of those player's moral codes -- both group codes and individual ones.)
The policeman Quirk has his own sense of right and wrong that often, but not always, coincides with the law. In matters relating to Spenser, due to his knowledge of and respect for him, Quirk often bends the law, allowing him a wide range of activity, unhampered by legal niceties or having to spend time explaining his actions to judges.
Spenser used to be a cop himself, but felt uncomfortable in that role. Their code as not close enough to his own personal code and was not flexible enough to meet the needs of varying circumstances for him to endure such service for long. In particular, his sense of what constitutes justice and what constitutes the end of an episode is very different from the official view.
In Chance , for instance, Spenser finishes the assignment for which he was hired in the first half of the book. Then he continues to risk his own life and spend his own money (and even gives away his entire fee) because of a moral obligation to see it through to his sense of an ending. He feels this obligation srongly, but he has difficulty explaining it logically, even to Susan, who is understanding, appreciative, and indulgent, but who might not on her own puruse the same matter with the same degree of intensity. It's his code. She respects him for that even when her own code differs.
Organized crime plays a major role in some recent Spenser mysteries -- Thin Air , Paper Doll , and Chance . Here the action gets more intense and brutal than in the early Spenser books, where the objective might be just to find a runaway child. But the emphasis here is not so much on the plot -- which can become quite contrived and difficult to believe. For instance, in Thin Air , the action centers around a Spanish-speaking gang which controls a vast stretch of a small city. The gang has its own code and law -- beyond the control of local authorities and in conflict/competition with local representatives of national mob activities. This gang has its headquarters in a bizarre tenement building that has enormous quantities of dirt on the roof, where they grow their own food, to remained self-sufficient. The old timber structure is straining under the weight, and a heavy rain takes that to the breaking point at the critical contrived moment in the story when Spenser has arranged for a competing gang to challenge them and besiege the headquarters. With that diversion going on in the background, Spenser and a Spanish-speaking ally succeed in lying their way into the building to rescue a kidnapped woman, the wife of a police-officer friend of Spenser's. It's a not very credible and ridiculously dangerous situation. There is much in the internal working for the gang community that is admirable. They have their own self-help code, to the exclusion of the rest of the world. It feels very medieval -- like a city-state from the days of Dante. But at the core of the community, a madman reigns. Much of his activity and his leadership is based on a code, based on ethnic identity, building a sense of pride and meaning among the ruins of society. But his brutality and his insane sexual fantasizing and role-playing undermine the structure of this society, which then collapses as the building collapses. The scene is very Dickens-like -- the moral corruption reflected in the physical corruption of the structure that houses it. And Parker has no qualms about breaking with verisimilitude, stretching beyond the limits of credibility to make a moral point and ensure that the "good guys," the ones with self-consistent codes, win.
Among the mobsters in Paper Doll and Chance , there are certain commonly held beliefs and rules. They operate under an overall reasonably consistent code, which is in contrast to the code of official law. They police and punish and reward one another based on this code. Individuals like Broz have their own individual codes which sometimes lead them to stretch the limits of the mob code. For instance they tend to give Spenser the benefit of the doubt out of their personal respect for him and their gratitude and sense of debt to him; and also because although his code differs from theirs, it is understandable and self-consistent, and they know exactly what they can expect from him -- how far he will go to help them and at what point he would turn them over to the law. Sometimes, their personal code involves complex and illogical family allegiance which may go against their own self-interst, the mob's best interests and the mob's sense of justice, (for instance, bending the rules and ignoring talents of loyal associates in order to advance the career of a non-good son).
Each of the major mobsters is characterized in this moral way. And Spenser's relationship with them and his willingness to help them and work with them and for them depends on his respect for and trust of them, based on their consistent adherence to a recognizable personal code. Those who have no code but self-interest must be destroyed. Those who do have a code are given some latitude, even though they may run rackets and kill people, so long as the murders they commit are consistent with their sense of justice, which Spenser respects.
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