David Corbett

Knight_horse_crColin_StittHe respected the genre, which is to say he respected us.

Photo: Colin Stitt

The following is the prepared text for a tribute given by David Corbett during the Anthony Award Ceremonies at Bouchercon 2006 in Madison, Wisconsin, to commemorate the Lifetime Achievement Award given to Robert B. Parker.

When I was thinking of what to say tonight, to a room full of people who know as much if not more about Robert B. Parker than I do, I kept coming back to a conversation I had a few years ago with an editor from a major publishing house—a man who shall remain nameless—in which he talked about those writers who, in his estimation, do or do not “respect the genre.”

In his opinion, James Patterson and Michael Connelly are clear-cut examples of writers who do, indeed, respect the genre, and their followings (or more to the point, their numbers) demonstrated that fact.

In contrast, two writers who do not respect the genre, as far as this gentleman was concerned, are George Pelecanos and Walter Mosley. “Neither one of them have sales anywhere near what their reputations would suggest,” he said, trying to justify himself—then, even more poignantly: “If you slap the words ‘race riot’ on the back of a book, don’t expect it to fly off the shelves.”

Now, you may infer from this, as I did, that this particular editor was confusing respecting the genre with respecting the bottom line. And I have to admit, having as I do a great admiration for both Mosley and Pelecanos, I felt a bit protective, which is a polite way to say I got pissed off. I thought this editor was slamming two first-rate and one-of-a-kind writers for being innovative—for not just taking the genre as an ironclad set of conventions, but trying to expand it by making their own distinctive contributions.

Now, if it’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that if you take a second look at what’s pushing your buttons, there’s almost always something else lurking in the background, daring you to figure it out.

And so I stopped getting mad, thought about it some more, and realized there really was a legitimate point to be made— though it may not have been the point this particular gentleman was trying to make.

Dennis Lehane once said that the two men who more than anyone else inspired him to write crime fiction were James Crumley and James Lee Burke. Both men appeared at about the same time—the early to mid-'70s—and they both contributed significant stylistic innovations of which I’m sure everyone’s aware. And I don’t think anyone in his right mind would say that either James Lee Burke or Jim Crumley doesn’t respect the genre.

But of course there was another crime writer who emerged at this same time, and though he may have lacked the stylistic gifts of Crumley and Burke, he was no less creative and innovative in his way. That writer was Robert B. Parker.

His innovation, as everyone knows, was to see the historical thread from the chivalric romance through to the modern detective story. He saw that the conventions that define the genre have a historical and a cultural and a psychological resonance—that the stories weren’t the result of modern urban angst, but had their roots in something much deeper, something intrinsic to who we are.

Parker_Robert_headNow I asked myself: Was this innovation, like Crumley’s and Burke’s, a case of “respecting the genre”? Isn’t trying to add something distinctive and unique to the genre a case of respecting it? Why work so hard to add something new to a form of artistic expression you don’t respect? Then again, playing devil’s advocate, I wondered whether Parker’s innovation wasn’t instead just a backhanded attempt to “transcend the genre,” that odious phrase that gets tossed around whenever literary authors go slumming in crime fiction.

Well, 33 years after the appearance of The Godwulf Manuscript, I think the answer’s pretty obvious: If Bob Parker doesn’t respect the genre, nobody does. He wasn’t trying to make it something else, something “better,” he was seeing it for what it was, and showed us all something we may not have recognized before. There was an impressive history here, a tradition. One we could learn from, and which could inspire us, if we let it.

Robert B. Parker

That point was brought home to me even more vividly one night when my wife was still alive. She was a lawyer, and one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met. But once the workday was done, around 9 o'clock at night usually, she’d turn off the phone, put on her PJs, climb into bed with the dogs, and open up a mystery novel. More times than not, that mystery was written by Bob Parker.

She could easily devour an entire Parker novel in one sitting. One night, as I was getting into bed, she tossed down the particular book she’d been reading, sat up in bed, flexed her muscles and said, in a singularly goofy voice: “I wanna be Spenser! I want a code and a quest!”

A light went on when she did that. I realized what a gift it is to be able to create a character readers love that much, to write a book people feel that way about, a book they can get lost in—people who work hard every day, trying to make the world at least a slightly better place. To write those kinds of books—that’s important work, it’s noble work. And I think that’s something Bob Parker, a working-class Irish kid from Boston, never lost sight of.

A buddy of mine once put it this way: There’s nothing wrong with entertainment, just entertainment that insults your intelligence.

Well, you can say what you want about whether the Spenser series is still as vibrant as it once was, or debate whether the Sunny Randall series measures up, or if the Jesse Stone books do, and so on and so forth—and I’m sure just about everyone at this conference has opinions on all of that—it doesn’t change the fact that for 33 years, during which he’s given us over 50 books, Bob Parker’s not only been stepping to the plate, he’s been making contact. He’s never insulted our intelligence. He’s been honest. He’s been funny. He knows how to keep the action clean and taut, so we keep turning pages. And though you may not find the words “race riot” on any of his jacket covers, he’s never shied away from talking about race in America, or about any other subject he considered important. And in the meantime, we all got that break from the grind we needed, so we could get back to work the next day, and try again to make things a little bit better for all of us.

He respected the genre, which is to say he respected us. And I think it’s for that reason, as much as any other, that we’re honoring him here tonight.

David Corbett’s latest novel is Do They Know I'm Running?.

This article first appeared in Mystery Scene Winter Issue #98.

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