HAMMERS OF THE FUTURE

By Jim Doherty

 

The Hammer Award, named for Mickey Spillane's immortal Mike Hammer and given by the Private Eye Writers of America , is unusual in that it is always given to a fictional character. It's awarded each year to the lead character in a private eye series who has left a singular mark on the genre. Past winners include Shell Scott, the hero of over thirty novels and dozens of short stories by Richard S. Prather, and Matt Scudder, the hero of the acclaimed series by Lawrence Block. Though ostensibly awarded to the character, the inferential winner of the award is, of course, the character's creator.

With the passing, almost exactly a month apart, of two major figures in our genre, Robert B. Parker and Dick Francis, it seems appropriate to speculate on future Hammer winners.

Both Parker and Francis were amazingly productive writers, but Parker, was, by far, the more prolific.

He wrote, or co-wrote, four non-fiction books, and seven stand-alone crime novels. He created such diverse series characters as Sunny Randall, a female PI in the vein of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone or Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski, small-town police chief Jesse Stone, and itinerant frontier lawmen Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. He was tagged to complete Raymond Chandler's final, unfinished Philip Marlowe novel Poodle Springs (Putnam, 1989), and followed it up with an original Marlowe pastiche, Perchance to Dream (Putnam, 1991), a direct sequel to The Big Sleep (Knopf, 1939). In a career panning thirty-seven years he wrote, or collaborated on, nearly seventy books.

But the ones he'll be best-remembered for are undoubtedly the forty-odd he wrote about a Boston PI named Spenser.

A professor of English Literature at Boston 's Northeastern University , Parker had written his doctoral dissertation, The Violent Hero – Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality , on the hard-boiled detective heroes created by the “Blessed Trinity” of private eye fiction, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond, Chandler , and Ross Macdonald. Two years after his dissertation was accepted, while holding down his full-time teaching position at Northeastern, he wrote a novel that grew out of his reverence for those authors, and especially for Chandler .

The Godwulf Manuscript (Houghton Miflin, 1973) unabashedly embraced all the tropes we associate with the hard-boiled PI. Spenser, its mono-named protagonist, was a 30-ish, unmarried, male, American ex-cop, who operated a one-man detective agency out of a large US city, and told his stories in the first person. Which is to say, he was a character who followed, in every single respect, what I have called elsewhere “The Marlowe Paradigm.” And he followed them deliberately and pointedly, and even a trifle self-consciously. Like Marlowe, Spenser had a name that evoked Elizabethan poetry. Like Marlowe, he was not merely an ex-cop, but an ex-DA's investigator (which, in Massachusetts , would mean he was an ex-state trooper). Like Marlowe, he was dismissed from his law enforcement position because of his smart mouth. Like Marlowe, it was his former boss, the DA, who recommended him to his client in his debut novel. And, like Marlowe, he was romantically involved with a woman named Loring (Brenda not Linda).

His client in Manuscript is an unnamed Beantown college (most likely modeled on Northeastern, where he was then employed, but possibly including some details from Boston University , where he had earned his Ph.D.). Spenser's been hired to find a “quest object” along the lines of Hammett's Maltese Falcon or Chandler's Brasher Doubloon, the titular medieval illuminated manuscript that's been stolen from the University. Along the way, Spenser encounters student radicals, homicidal religious cultists, willing co-eds, threatening mobsters, tough cops, worried parents, and a whole lot of violence. But, once again like Marlowe, he's a man fit for adventure, and he's up to handling it all.

The book got a lot of buzz and a lot of attention. Parker's whole-hearted embrace of all the familiar elements of the private eye story, along with a snappy writing style and a gift for pace and dialog, made it perhaps the most popular debut mystery novel of the year.

Over the next three years, he followed it up with three more novels, God Save the Child (Houghton Miflin, 1974), Mortal Stakes (Houghton Miflin, 1975), and Promised Land (Houghton Miflin, 1976), each of them getting the same kind of critical accolades as Manuscript , and each increasing his popularity.

God Save the Child is notable for introducing Susan Silverman, wise and compassionate therapist and all-around hottie. Reportedly modeled on Parker's wife, Joan, Susan Silverman would, in ensuing novels, crowd Brenda Loring (who also appears in this novel and the next) completely off the stage to become Spenser's One True Love. And virtual wife.

Mortal Stakes has Spenser trying to discover who's blackmailing the star pitcher of the Boston Red Sox. It's one of many books, some featuring Spenser and some not, that show Parker's love of baseball. Although Brenda Loring makes one last appearance, this novel (probably my favorite in the series) is the one in which Susan Silverman nails down her role as Spenser's sole Significant Other.

For me, Promised Land , which pitted Spenser against a rather unconvincing ring of radical feminist terrorists as well as a vicious loan shark who's out to nail Spenser's client, was something of a disappointment. But it's undeniably one of the most important books in the series, because the aforementioned loan shark has hired a local hood named Hawk, who's destined to become as important a figure in the series as (arguably a more important figure than) Susan Silverman, and because, much as I may have personally preferred the first three books, it succeeded in doing something that no other hard-boiled private eye novel had managed to do in seventeen years, win the MWA Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel. Parker was suddenly all but the fourth member of the Trinity.

Parker's fifth Spenser novel, The Judas Goat (Houghton Miflin, 1978), had all the elements we now associate with the character fully in place. Hired to hunt down a ring of international terrorists (real ones, this time, not wannabes like the strident feminists in Promised Land , he contacts Hawk, no longer an adversary, but, in this novel, and in virtually all that will follow, Spenser's de facto partner.

With the publication of The Judas Goat , Parker left academia behind to become a full-time crime novelist. Over the next half-dozen years, he produced six new Spenser novels, one stand-alone crime novel. Wilderness (Delacorte, 1979), one romance novel told from the point of view of the male protagonist rather than the female, Love and Glory (Delacorte, 1983), and a collaborative non-fiction book with his wife Joan about how she and their family coped with her breast cancer, Three Weeks in Spring (Houghton Miflin, 1978). He hadn't quite reached the level of protean productivity of two to three books a year that would eventually become his norm, but he was getting close.

1985 saw the publication of his breakthrough Spenser novel, the New York Times best-seller A Catskill Eagle (Delacorte), and the debut of a TV series based on the character, Spenser for Hire (ABC, 1985-88). Oddly, though perhaps predictably, Parker's mainstream success made him, in many ways, less popular in the mystery community than he had been. There began to be complaints that Parker was just phoning in his books, coasting on his facility with dialog, style, and pace that disguised the thinness of his plots and characters. There is, to be sure, some justification for these criticisms, but Parker stayed on top for nearly four decades, and no one stays on top that long without having something on the ball.

It should also be noted that Parker was always willing to try new things, a female private eye, police procedurals, historical stand-alone crime novels, or westerns such as his Cole/Hitch series or his novel examining the events leading up to the gunfight at the OK Corral, Gunman's Rhapsody (Putnam, 2001).

Even within the boundaries of the Spenser series, he experimented. For example, one of the more recent Spensers, Chasing the Bear (Philomel, 2009), was actually a juvenile novel, telling a story from Spenser's adolescence. It was both an innovative way of looking at his character (imagine Sam Spade or Mike Hammer talking about their childhood!), and a shrewd piece of marketing, since it could, potentially, develop youthful fans of his work who would, in later years, adulthood, grow up to be fans of the adult Spensers.

He died at his writing desk, diligently working on his next book. That strikes me as precisely the way a writer should die. The influence he has had on PI fiction will continue to be felt for years to come.

In the wake of Parker's death, it was said in several corners that he “saved” the private eye sub-genre. That's perhaps a bit of an overstatement. For one thing, there were several very fine writers, Joe Gores, Bill Pronzini, and, under a number of different pseudonyms, Dennis Lynds, to name only three, who were all loyally toiling in the PI vineyards prior to Parker's debut. And even allowing that PI novels were less numerous than they had once been prior to Parker, it was still thriving in other mediums. There were, for example, in the years preceding the Spenser's debut, any number of notable PI movies being produced, such as Gunn (Paramount, 1967), Shaft (MGM, 1971), Hickey and Boggs (UA, 1972), and especially Chinatown (Paramount, 1974); and television PI's were arguably enjoying a veritable Golden Age with shows like Mannix (CBS, 1967 -75), Cannon (CBS, 1971-76), Harry O (ABC, 1974-76), and The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974-80).

Nevertheless, it's clear that Parker's success paved the way for an awful lot of private eye writers. Loren D. Estleman, Jeremiah Healy (who regarded Parker as a mentor), Jonathan Valin, Max Allan Collins, and Robert Crais, are just a few of the names that followed a trail that Parker, if he didn't quite blaze it, certainly made easier to travel. Indeed, one could make a case that, without Parker, there wouldn't have been enough potential members for Bob Randisi to have founded the Private Eye Writers of America .

And, in his creation of Hawk, Spenser's “dark” half, Parker seemed to have really hit on something. Now the mysterious, dangerous, possibly criminal partner of the hero is almost as well-established an element in PI fiction as first-person narration. Characters ranging from Crais's Joe Pike in the Elvis Cole series, to Walter Mosely's Mouse in the Easy Rawlins series, to Benjamin Schutz's Arnie Kendall in the Leo Haggerty series, to W. Glen Duncan's “Cowboy” in the Rafferty series, are all direct descendants of Hawk.

One thing that came through in many of Parker's novels was his love of sports. Spenser, in addition to being an ex-cop, was an ex-prizefighter. Police Chief Jesse Stone a former professional baseball player. Mortal Stakes , as I mentioned, involved baseball. The Judas Goat the Summer Olympics. His stand-alone historical mystery, Double Play ( Gardner 's, 2005) was built around the rookie year of Major League Baseball's first black player, Jackie Robinson. And Spenser's titular “client” in Hugger Mugger (Putnam, 2000) is race horse who might just be the next Secretariat.

Dick Francis went Parker one better. He wasn't just a sports enthusiast. He was a professional athlete. And not just a professional athlete. In his prime he was the best there was at his particular sport.

As a steeplechase jockey, Francis had few peers. And, while he's best-remembered now, not as a former jockey, but as a mystery novelist who wrote about jockeys and horse racing, it's important to make his former accomplishments clear. Before he became one of the most popular and honored crime novelists on the planet, he wasn't merely a great athlete; he was a “phenom.” He was to steeplechase racing what Joe Louis and Mohammad Ali were to boxing, what Babe Ruth and Willie Mays were to baseball, what Jim Brown and Joe Montana were to football, what Michael Jordan was to basketball, and what Pelé was to soccer.

A second generation jockey, Francis began his sports career after a stint of WW2 military duty as a fighter pilot in the RAF. Forced to leave the sport after a bad fall, he wrote an autobiography about his jockey years, The Sport of Kings (Michael Joseph, 1957), which led to his getting hired as a sportswriter by the London Daily Express .

Encouraged by his wife, Francis wrote a crime novel with a racing background, Dead Cert (Holt, 1962). This was the first of some forty novels and one short story collection, all dealing with various aspects of horse racing. The ingenuity that allowed Francis to come up with new plots about horse racing was truly remarkable.

Unlike Parker, Francis generally eschewed series characters. Though his heroes are similar in many ways, they come from a variety of walks of life. Jockeys, or ex-jockey, not too surprisingly, predominate. But he's written about characters from professions as diverse as a journalist in Forfeit (Harper, 1969), an airline pilot in Rat Race (Harper, 1970), an accountant in Risk (Harper, 1978), a movie star in Smokescreen (Harper, 1973), a liquor store owner in Proof (Putnam, 1985), and an architect in Decider (Putnam, 1994).

The first actual professional investigator Francis ever wrote about was Sid Halley, an operative for Hunt Radnor Associates, a large detective firm in Britain . Halley headlined Odds Against (Harper, 1966), Francis's fourth novel. Like Francis, Halley was a jockey forced to retire from the sport he loved because of an injury suffered during a race. Unlike Francis, the injury left him permanently crippled, his left hand damaged beyond repair. Sinking into a swamp of self-pity do to the almost simultaneous loss of a wife he loved but couldn't get along with, his profession, and the use of his hand, he's not pursuing his detective career with any great relish until he and his partner, Chico Barnes, get assigned to a case involving a series of unexplained accidents at a venerable racetrack that some shady land developers want to take over. Before the case is completed, Sid will lose his hand altogether, but he'll also develop a new interest in life as he discovers that his might be as good a sleuth as he once was a jockey.

Odds Against became the first of Francis's works to earn an Edgar nomination for Best Novel. It began a streak that continued for the next three years as Flying Finish (Harper, 1967), Blood Sport (Harper, 1968), and Forfeit all garnered Edgar nominations. And Forfeit wasn't just nominated; it won. To this day, no other author has ever duplicated Francis's four-year streak.

As with most of his lead characters, Francis abandoned Halley once he completed his starring role in a single book. And it's likely that he never would have returned to the character had it not been for the Magic of Television.

In 1979, Yorkshire Television produced a six-episode series called The Racing Game , starring Mike Gwylim as Halley, for Britain 's ITV network. The first episode was a faithful, if abbreviated, adaptation of Odds Against . The remaining episodes were original scripts. Francis was very pleased with the series (which aired in the US under PBS's Mystery! umbrella), and particularly pleased with Gwylim's performance as Halley. So pleased, in fact, that he was inspired, for the first time in his writing career, to bring back a character.

Whip Hand (Harper, 1980) had Halley, now running his own PI agency in partnership with Chico Barnes, getting hired to investigate three separate, autonomous cases simultaneously. The wife of a horse trainer retains him to investigate why horses trained by her husband, horses that were successful as two-year-olds, are invariably become failures as three-year-olds. His former father-in-law asks Sid to get Sid's ex-wife out of trouble she's gotten into involving a phony charity. And the British Racing Club hires him to investigate a corrupt gambling syndicate. His useless left hand now amputated and replaced by a piece of high-tech prosthesis, Halley and his partner tackle the multiple assignments with flair and style.

The book was an immediate success, winning Francis his second Edgar for Best Novel as well as a Gold Dagger from the British Crime Writers Association in the same category. With the exception of John le Carré 's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Coward-McCann, 1964), it is the only book ever to win both awards. And with that Edgar win, Francis also became the only writer, to that point, ever to win two MWA awards in the Best Novel category.

Over a decade and half later, Francis, succumbing to pleas from his many fans, returned to Sid a third time. In Come to Grief (Putnam, 1995), the jockey-turned-PI is on his own, his former partner, newly-married Chico Barnes, having gotten out of the detective business at the insistence of his wife. From a large agency, to a two-man partnership, Sid's become a sole proprietor. Looking into a series of mutilations of thoroughbred racehorses, he starts to develop evidence that the culprit is one of his best friends, TV sports journalist Ellis Quint. Aside from being a close friend, Quint is a publicly beloved figure in the racing world. Nevertheless, Sid soldiers on, and the evidence he gathers soon becomes incontrovertible. Now, pilloried by the press, Sid's going to have to testify against his old friend, which puts him in the untenable position of being unable to defend his actions in the press, since British law prevents him from talking about the case publicly. In the meantime, the odds are seriously against Sid's even living long enough to bear witness against Quint.

Come to Grief , like its predecessors, was an immediate hit. And, with its publication, Francis was able to perform an unprecedented hat trick. He won his third Edgar in the Best Novel category, a feat still unequaled in MWA history. Moreover, Sid Halley became the only fictional detective to headline a series in which every single entry had been an Edgar nominee.

Slightly more than a decade later, Francis produced what he intended, at the time, to be his swan song. Under Orders (Putnam, 2006) appeared shortly after the death of his beloved wife, Mary, and was dedicated to her memory. Mrs. Francis had been an invaluable assistant to the author, researching various aspects of the novels, retyping his hand-written manuscripts, editing his copy for grammatical and spelling errors. Without her, the grief-stricken Francis did not feel he would be able to carry on.

If Under Orders was to be his farewell appearance, it was a great one to go out on. Sid, still in his 30's, despite having been introduced forty years earlier, is simultaneously looking into the possibility of races being fixed, as well as the possibly related murder of a jockey. At the same time, he's actively pursuing a new love, Marina van der Meer, a Dutch stunner about whom Sid's having matrimonial thoughts. But his relentless investigation will put both himself and Marina in danger.

Under Orders was somewhat unique in that it was the only entry in the Halley series that did not get an Edgar nomination. Nevertheless, it was, like the prior entries in the tetralogy, a thoroughly entertaining performance by a master who, if he was leaving the stage, was leaving it at the peak of his powers.

In the event, it turned out that Under Orders , though it was, apparently, the last Halley, was not to be the last Francis. Encouraged by Felix Francis, the younger of his two sons, Francis was encouraged to write at least three more novels, all of them done in collaboration with Felix. None of them featured Halley, but perhaps there's an unfinished manuscript starring the one-handed operative that Felix can complete. If there isn't, the four that exist are still an enormous accomplishment.

Although Sid's undoubtedly Francis's most famous and popular character, he doesn't occupy as large a place in Francis's corpus as Spenser does in Parker's. Parker is, for practical purposes, “The Spenser Author,” and those non-Spenser books he wrote seem like side trips from his main journey.

The four Halley novels, by contrast, constitute less than ten percent of Francis's entire output. And, appearing irregularly over a period of some four decades, roughly one novel every ten years, Francis simply never became as identified with Halley as Parker did with Spenser

If the reading public didn't identify Francis as “The Halley Author” to the same degree that they identified Parker as “The Spenser Author,” I suspect that Francis saw more of himself in Halley than in any of his other protagonists. Like Sid, he had to leave the sport he loved because of an injury. Like Sid, he had to find a new profession. Like Sid, he excelled in the profession of crime writing as much as Sid ultimately did in the profession of crime-solving. That Sid was the only character Francis returned to repeatedly is testimony to how close the author felt to his creation.

Halley, unlike Spenser, is not really a typical private eye (for all that he was often depicted wearing a snap brim fedora and trenchcoat when Mike Gwylim portrayed him in The Racing Game ). A Brit rather than an American, an ex-jockey rather than an ex-cop, working the rural parts of London where horse ranches and racing stadiums are found rather than the urban mean streets, working (at least in his first appearance) for a huge agency rather than running his own one-man show, he diverges from too many of the “Marlowe Paradigm” elements to seem like part of the Hammet-Chandler-Macdonald tradition.

Nevertheless, he certainly qualifies as hard-boiled. He was as tough as nails, enduring, in the course of his detective career, unspeakable torture, working against long odds, facing danger and death with self-deprecating courage. His first-person accounts of his cases, like the first-person narration in all of Francis's novels, are masterpieces of matter-of-fact, workman-like prose, giving the impression of a regular guy telling you a story over a couple of beers in a cozy neighborhood pub.

I suppose the smart money would be betting on Spenser to get this year's Hammer award, and I'd have to acknowledge the justice of that choice if he did.

Yet I wouldn't ever count Sid Halley out. In his jockey days, as in his current profession as a detective, he always had a knack for coming up from behind.