Ghost-Writing for Chandler Gives Tough Guy No Jitters

Why would a wealthy, successful mystery writer like Robert Parker put aside his highly profitable, widely acclaimed Spenser novels to finish a fragment of a work started by a lonely, sick and suicidal Raymond Chandler?

Well, first, there’s money: more than $1 million for three months’ work on “The Poodle Springs Story,” a representative of the Chandler estate says.

Second, it’s also the fulfillment of a dream, Parker says: “I grew up wanting to be Raymond Chandler, and now, in a sense, I am.”

Finally, he notes, “it’s an adventure for any writer to take on the completion of the master’s work. It is an occasion for reviewers and critics to point out my failure: ‘Well, he’s no Chandler.’ . . .

“The real trick will be, can I occupy Raymond Chandler’s point of view? Can I cease to occupy Spenser’s and get myself into Marlowe’s . . . ? If I’m unable to, I’ll just write another Spenser book with a name change and that will be unfortunate--as most of the critics and book reviewers on the national scene will tell me.”

Parker, however, is probably as well-equipped as anyone to write a Philip Marlowe detective novel in the master’s voice, as the Putnam Berkley Publishing Group Inc. announced he would do on Nov. 16. He read his first Chandler novel in 1946 at age 14.

“I was just so taken with it that I scouted up everything he wrote,” he recalls. “I read the last four or five as they came out. I’d put them aside and read them again. It got so that every time I would go to L.A., I’d read one.”

A ‘10th or 12th’ Re-Reading

Now, in preparation for finishing the Chandler novel, Boston-based Parker says, “I’m re-reading Chandler for the 10th or 12th time.”

Like Chandler, who didn’t complete his first novel until he was 51, Parker, who is now 56, came to mystery writing late in life. He started as a technical writer and advertising copywriter. Then at age 30 he went back to school and began work on his Ph. D.

“I was 39 when I got it,” Parker says of the degree. “It takes a long time when you are trying to do it part-time and support a house and two cars and a wife and two kids. . . . My dissertation was on the American hero and his evolution from cowboy to private eye. It had to do with Puritanism and the frontier. It was very long and not very interesting but it got me tenure (at Northeastern University) . . . and I didn’t have to work anymore.”

Like Spenser, his fictional detective, Parker comes across as self-assured, articulate and unwilling to suffer fools. Quietly confident in matters of writing, he doesn’t bother with word processors. “I’m not technophobic,” he says, but adds that he doesn’t need anything more than his old upright typewriter, because he never revises anyway. “The first draft is the one that goes.”

Since Parker first started writing detective novels in 1972, he has written 16 Spenser novels and done well for himself; at one point, his fictional creation even became a television series (“Spenser: For Hire” with actor Robert Urich).

“You have to be able to write, think up a story and do it regularly,” Parker says of his craft. “The goal of my day is write five pages, run a couple of miles and lift some weights. If I have done those things, I have fulfilled the day’s mission.”

Parker says he will start work on the Chandler book on Dec. 12 (“I’m booked till then”) and deliver the manuscript in March. In the meantime, he’s rushing to complete a two-hour movie of the week for Burt Reynolds. And he is hoping to see one of his books made into a feature film.

“My friends are so tired of hearing me say, ‘My book, “Wilderness,” is about to be a major motion picture.’ It’s been 10 years since they bought the rights.” But, he says, this time “I do believe they are actually about to produce ‘Wilderness.’ ”

Odd Collaboration

Although it’s not unusual for authors to complete unfinished manuscripts of noted but deceased writers, in most cases where this has been done, they at least had a first draft or nearly completed manuscript to work with.

But all Chandler wrote of “Poodle Springs” in the last year of his life was the first 12 pages and nothing else, Parker says, adding: “He stops in mid-page, as a matter of fact. . . . This is a somewhat top-heavy collaboration.”

Still, Parker notes, Chandler produced a polished 12 pages. “They don’t seem to need any work. I plan to leave them just as they are.”

As Chandler’s fragment begins, Marlowe is married to Linda Loring (a character from “The Long Goodbye”) and living with her on her money in Palm Springs. But to remain independent, he tries to set up a detective office on the other side of the tracks. The owner of an illegal gambling joint asks Marlowe to take on a job. When he refuses, the gambler sends two gunmen to change his mind. Marlowe humiliates the gunmen and goes home. “And that,” Parker says, “is the end of Chandler’s start.”

Parker doesn’t like to talk about his fictional characters. “It’s unseemly,” he says, “for writers to spend a lot of time talking about their own creation.”

But there are some major differences in world view between his Spenser, who, like Parker himself, is a big man who lifts weights, and Chandler’s Marlowe.

Spenser is a gourmand. Spenser novels are filled with loving descriptions of dinners prepared and eaten, while Marlowe’s concern for good food generally begins and ends with a good cup of coffee.

Spenser is far more liberated than Marlowe in his attitudes toward women; Parker even goes so far as to have his character in one book dutifully wait for a woman while she goes off to Los Angeles to have an affair with a married man.

Unlike Marlowe, Spenser can casually blast someone away, then go home to haute cuisine. Like Marlowe, Spenser is a master of the quick quip and his repartee with thugs often includes quotes from literary classics.

“Off the top of my head,” Parker says, “I would say that Marlowe is sadder and lonelier than Spenser. He has less connection with friends and with the world in which he lives. I think he is probably more class-conscious than Spenser. I think he is probably more convinced of the pervasive corruption than Spenser. Spenser simply accepts it as the human condition.”

But Does He Know L.A.?

For someone whose version of “Poodle Springs” will undoubtedly be intensely scrutinized by dyed-in-the-wool Chandler fans, Parker doesn’t seem particularly anxious about his ability to duplicate Chandler’s Los Angeles.

“Chandler’s sense of place and Southern California-ness are, in part, a contrivance of the reviewers who are a little uncomfortable in liking Chandler as well as they do,” he says. “They say it can’t be because he is writing great literature, because after all, ‘He is just writing detective stories.’ And they can’t (like him for his) wonderful hard-guy dialogue because ‘I’m too intelligent to fall for that.’ So it must be his sense of place.”

“In fact,” Parker says, “Chandler may not know the city as well as we think he does. That’s illusion. The real trick isn’t, ‘Do I know the city well enough?’ but ‘Am I clever enough?’ ”

Parker just may be. In “A Savage Place,” Parker described Beverly Hills as a place where “nothing moved. It looked like an empty set. No dogs sitting in the front yards with their tongues out. No cats. No children. No bicycles. No basketball rims on garages. No baseballs, tree huts. No squirrels--’Place looks like Disneyland after hours. What’re they doing in there, watching videotapes of people living?’ ”

Because “Poodle Springs” takes place in Palm Springs, a spot Parker, a lifelong Boston native, had never visited, earlier this month he flew to Los Angeles and drove to Palm Springs with a friend. “I wanted to find out what it looked like, what it felt like to be in it and what color the hills were. Then we had lunch and came home.”

Although his friend was aghast at what he took to be Parker’s cavalier attitude, Parker explained to him that one day in Palm Springs was all that was needed, given that most of the novel will take place in Los Angeles anyway. “Either one day is enough,” he says, “or you’ve got to spend six months.”

Critics Split

Parker’s publisher (Putnam) isn’t worried about his ability to enter Chandler’s vision and recreate his style. But some mystery writers have their doubts about the propriety of such a project.

“Marlowe was Chandler’s creation,” says Joseph Hansen, author of the Dave Brandstetter detective novels. “It’s not fair to take it. . . . If a man wants to write detective stories, he should create his own character.”

Roger L. Simon, author of the Moses Wine mystery novels and head of the North American chapter of the International Assn. of Crime Writers, has a different take.

He says the collaboration is “obviously a stunt. You’re going to get 90% Parker and 10% Chandler.” On the other hand, Simon says, “So what? Parker is a good writer.”