Robert B. Parker, R.I.P. Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Godwulf Manuscript

The plot of "The Godwulf Manuscript" involves a missing manuscript, campus radicals, some lovely ladies (including a mother-and-daughter duo that tangle with Spenser's heart) and a thug named Phil. Parker wrote the novel while he was working at Northeastern University, in Boston, and the dedication read "This, like everything else, is for Joan, David, and Daniel" (his wife and two sons).

Answer: It is never mentioned

Originally, Spenser's name was to have been 'David' (after Parker's older son), but the writer didn't want to leave his son Daniel out, so he left his detective's first name unsaid. In 1990's "Stardust", the actress Jill Joyce has this exchange with Spenser:
"Do you have a first name, Mr. Spenser?" Jill said. She had a soft girlish voice with just a hint of huskiness at the edges. I told her my first name.
"I don't like it," she said.
"I was afraid you wouldn't," I said. "I've been worried about it all month."

Answer: Jesse Stone

Chief Stone was a minor-league baseball player before an injury ruined his dreams of playing in the bigs. Alcohol finished the job, forcing him out of his job as a homicide detective in Los Angeles. So when Paradise asked him to interview for the job of Chief, he was grateful for a second chance--and wary as to why a small town would want an alcoholic as their top lawman.

The Jesse Stone television movie specials starring Tom Selleck began in 2005 for CBS, and Parker said of Selleck that he "nails the character."

Answer: Jackie Robinson

The author's note for this novel reads "This is a work of fiction about a real man. Most of what I've written I made up. I have, however, attempted to render Jackie Robinson accurately. As he was, or as I imagined him to be, in 1947, when I was turning fifteen, and he was changing the world.

The rest is altogether fiction. It may be more Burke's story than Jackie's. But without Jackie, Burke would have had no story. And neither would I."

Answer: Appaloosa

"Appaloosa", "Resolution" and "Brimstone" are the three books in the Everett Hitch series ("Walking Shadow" is a Spenser novel), and the film version of the first book also starred Renée Zellweger, Jeremy Irons and Lance Henriksen. From the first chapter of the book: "It was a long time ago, now, and there were many gunfights to follow, but I remember as well, perhaps, as I remember anything, the first time I saw Virgil Cole shoot. Time slowed down for him.

He fought with an odd stateliness. Always steady and never fast, but always faster than the man he was fighting."

Answer: Edgar

The full name is the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the name honors the American writer (better known for his horror stories) who is popularly supposed to have invented the detective story with his "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The awards honor the best in detective, crime and mystery fiction, non-fiction, film, radio, theater and television; Parker and his wife Joan shared a nomination in 1990 for writing a television episode for the show "B.L. Stryker".

Answer: Korea

Parker served from 1954 to 1956, after which he attended Boston University and finished his M.A. in English in 1957. He worked as a management trainee, then became the co-owner of an advertising agency. He went back to Boston U. to get his doctorate, and taught college English until 1979, after which time he was financially secure enough to switch to full-time writing. According to Parker, "I didn't like it (Korea) at all. I was there for sixteen months and we had intrusions from the other side and did security for the Neutral Nations Inspection Team. We were up on the DMZ and the Truce Zone there for a while and there was a certain amount of danger..."

Answer: Philip Marlowe

"Poodle Springs" is the eighth Marlowe novel (he appeared previously in such books as "The Big Sleep" and "The Long Goodbye"), and after Parker finished his 'collaboration', he wrote the ninth by himself, 1991's "Perchance to Dream". Parker's dissertation in college was called "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage, and Urban Reality: A Study of the Private Eye in the Novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald".

Answer: Hawk

Hawk appears for the first time in 1976's "Promised Land";

"And what is Hawk's kind of work?" Susan said, still to Hawk.
"He does muscle and gun work."
"Ah prefer the term soldier of fortune, honey," Hawk said to me.

In 1989, ABC premiered a television show based on the character named "A Man Called Hawk", starring Avery Brooks (who had also played the character on ABC's "Spenser: For Hire" series).

Answer: Potshot

"Taming a Sea-Horse" comes from Browning's "My Last Duchess" ("Notice Neptune, though,/ Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,/ Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!"), "Pale Kings and Princes" from Keats's "La Belle Dame sans Merci" ("I saw pale kings and princes too,/ Pale warriors, death-pale were they all"), and "A Catskill Eagle" from Melville's "Moby-Dick" ("And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls..."). "Potshot" is the name of a town in Arizona that Spenser is hired to clean up.