In 1973, a Korean War veteran with a Ph.D. in English from Boston University published his first novel, a detective tale called "The Godwulf Manuscript."
Its hero was a private detective named Spenser (no first name). Robert B. Parker’s books about him became a phenomenon — Parker wrote 40 bestselling novels about Spenser (as well as numerous books in three other series) before he died at his desk in 2010.
In 2011, Parker’s family and estate announced that another writer would continue the Spenser series. Ace Atkins, a former St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune journalist who had written a crime fiction series and four stand-alone crime novels and was about to launch a new series about a Mississippi sheriff, would continue bringing Spenser to readers.
Since then, Atkins has written two novels per year, one about Spenser and one about Sheriff Quinn Colson. The new Spenser novel "Bye Bye Baby" will be his 10th and last — although not the last of Spenser. (Author Mike Lupica will be writing the next Spenser books.)
“I will miss Spenser. I loved writing about Spenser,” Atkins said in a Zoom interview from his home in Oxford, Mississippi. “But whatever I do, those characters are never mine.”
He’ll be continuing the Colson series, although he’s still thinking about how to write the next one. “How do I address the pandemic? He’s the sheriff, his wife is a nurse at a community hospital.
“I’m not going to write corona times in Mississippi. It’s been hard, hard on everybody. I don’t necessarily want to see that book. You want a little bit of good news.
“I haven’t started writing the new Quinn Colson, but it will be either in the future or something from Quinn’s past.”
He is at work on a new book, though. “I’m working on a novel now very much in line with some of the historic true crime stories I’ve written in the past. It’s set in Memphis, it’s very Memphis centric, a celebration of the good, the bad and the ugly that is Memphis.”
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: "Bye Bye Baby" is the 50th Spenser novel and the 10th written by you, right?
A: That’s it.
Q: Why is this your last Spenser?
A: I’d been thinking for a long time that by writing books for the Parker estate I had less time for my own books. These other projects I wanted to do got backed up and backed up, kind of like a Netflix queue. I’ve got to start getting to projects I really want to write.
And I’m a sucker for good round numbers. The 50th Spenser sounded like a good time to step back.
It wasn’t something I’d ever planned to do. I’d never write for any other estate or continue another series. I just love that character so much, so when the opportunity came up I took it. But no matter what they’re never really my books.
Q: We talked about this when you first started writing the Spenser books a decade ago. You were stepping into some big shoes. What was the experience like?
A: Practice makes perfect. The more time you spend with a character, the more you get to know them.
These books are a lot harder to write than they may appear. They’re smaller books, they’re not very thick, they’re fun, easy reads.
I gained a lot of respect for Parker keeping the books so tight, for the economy of his writing. Writing these books, I probably spent more time removing words than adding words.
Plus there’s an added level of difficulty: You’re not just telling a story, you’re telling a story the way someone else would tell it.
It’s almost like I’ve been in a weird apprenticeship for 10 years, taking a deep dive into Spenser and his world. I could have written a dozen dissertations on Robert Parker and the detective hero.
Q: How did the Spenser books influence your own books about Quinn Colson? The Colson books don’t sound like Spenser books, but are there more subtle influences?
I look at Spenser and ask myself, what is it about this character that’s lasted 50 years? There are not a lot of characters who do that, who have that longevity. What creates that bond with the reader?
Spenser has existed now 10, 12 years after Parker’s death, and there will be other writers who carry him forward for another 10 years, or 50, or 100. What brings us back to them that’s different from other hero-driven books?
I get letters from readers saying, “This book means so much to me, it got me through a rough patch,” that kind of personal connection.
I’ve applied that to my own character, the broad ideas of what makes a hero, what makes a hero resonate with people.
Q: Writing the Spenser books, you not only inherited his character but a whole supporting cast of very well-defined characters and a very distinctive setting. What was that like?
A: The only thing I was directed to do by estate, that they felt very sure about, was that the stories should remain contemporary.
I would have loved to set these books in the ‘70s, in gritty old Boston. I’ve written those kinds of thing before with my historical novels, true crime novels.
The facet of Spenser that makes him different from, not to name any names, some of the big hero-driven books with these tough guys who can beat anybody up, is that they’re afraid of the social issues, they’re worried about what demographics might be offended if they step on toes.
Parker was never afraid of the issues.
Hawk, for example — having a white guy and a Black guy working together is a pretty standard thing these days. But when Parker did that in the ‘70s Boston was a hotbed of racial conflict. Having a white hero and a Black character who was his equal and best friend was very unusual.
Q: What has it been like to deal with the issue of a series character aging, or not aging? If Spenser were a real person he’d be in his 90s now.
A: There would be a lot of chases on a walker, going down Boyleston Avenue, maybe with Hawk on a scooter.
Bob made that decision long ago to make him perpetually somewhere in his 50s and very fit.
I had wanted to bob and weave throughout Parker’s books, write about Spenser at different times. I would have loved the idea of setting a book before cellphones and Google, and in Boston in that period.
There is a scene with Spenser in one of Parker’s last books joking about getting a cellphone, getting a computer. Yes, Spenser, you’re probably going to need to learn to use the internet.
Q: In "Bye Bye Baby," the case Spenser takes on is protecting a progressive, Black, female politician from death threats from white supremacist groups. What led you to that plot?
A: I’m sure I’ll get letters from people complaining that Spenser has gone political. But it’s not about politics.
The whole point of Spenser is what is decent, what is fair, what is the right thing to do?
The through line from "The Godwulf Manuscript" (the first Spenser book) to "Bye Bye Baby" is his sense of decency.
Parker was never afraid to take these things on, like race relations in Boston. He was writing about white crazy supremacists in the 1980s in "Looking for Rachel Wallace," writing about a group very much like the Proud Boys.
"Looking for Rachel Wallace" was also about feminism, about gay and lesbian issues. Not something a lot of hard-boiled detective books were dealing with at the time. (The book was published in 1980.) But that’s why we’re talking about Spenser 50 years on, is the social commentary.
The tough, excessively macho guys who can beat up anybody — Spenser was always a commentary on those guys. That’s Spenser in a nutshell.
He was a detective who was not just tough but had some intelligence, some thoughtfulness, who had an idea of fairness, could listen to other people from other ways of life. He had a sense of decency, a sense of intellectual curiosity.
If we’re going to do a contemporary story, the idea of somebody who is an elected representative receiving not just a death threat but countless death threats in order to do their job just struck me as a very Spenser-like story.
I’m proud of this last one.
If you’re writing about contemporary issues or crime, you can’t sit back and not take note of something like Charlottesville or what happened at the Capitol, to say this is dishonorable, this is horrible, that the only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
And that’s what Spenser is about.
