The Spenser Novels
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(Click Title For Details)
Spenser Related Publications
Jesse Stone Novels
Sunny Randall Novels
Raymond Chandler
Non-Fiction
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The PI in Hammett and Chandler (300)
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1984
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Parker on Writing (75)
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1985
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Parker on Writing (300)
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1985
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Other Fiction
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Three Weeks in Spring
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1982
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SMALL VICES
Published by
Putnam Publishing Group Inc.
March 1997
Spenser dies--and lives to tell the tale--in Robert B. Parker's stunning
new bestseller.
"Spenser proves himself once more a modern-day knight in shining armor,"
cheered Publisher's Weekly of Robert B. Parker's most recent New York
Times bestseller, Chance. And, said The New York Times Book Review,
"Parker's stouthearted hero proves that he is still as tough and manly
as they come, and more principled than ever." With Small Vices, Parker
adds another masterpiece to the private-eye canon, a novel that is both
galvanizing action-suspense and a complex meditation on morality and
mortality, as Spenser's very future hangs in the balance.
Ellis Alves is a bad kid from the 'hood with a long, long record, but
did he really murder Melissa Henderson, a white coed from ritzy
Pemberton College? Alves's former lawyers think he was framed, and they
hire Spenser to uncover the truth. As he and longtime associate Hawk
race from the back streets of Boston to Manhattan's most elegant
avenues, Spenser gets a postgraduate course in the seamy side of
life--an ethical no-man's-land where twisted cops and spoiled rich kids
with peculiar private proclivities are just the tip of the iceberg.
The stakes abruptly shift from corruption to catastrophe when a master
assassin's bullets take Spenser down. He survives the
attack--barely--but must play dead to the world, while recovering his
strength hiding in secret. Only then can he see justice done--and let
the shooter know that it's payback time.
Wonderfully wry and powerfully affecting, Small Vices is a splendid
showcase for Robert B. Parker's prodigious talents.
Robert B. Parker is the author of more than twenty-eight books,
including the recent Spenser bestsellers Chance and Thin Air. He lives
in Boston.
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Spensariums's Aphorisms and Allusions
"Never knew somebody knew more stuff that didn't matter."
Hawk to Spenser:
Taming a Seahose - Chapter 29
The Title:
Small Vices
King Lear (William Shakespeare)
Act IV, scene VI, LN 169:
Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
Chapter 1
"Happiness is not the art of being well deceived."
So much for Alexander Pope," I said.
This concept is more accurately attributed to Jonathan Swift in "Tale of a Tub."
More specifically to Section IX, "A Digression Concerning The Original, The Use,
And Improvement Of Madness In A Commonwealth"
in which he proffers:
"For, if we take an examination
of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties
and adjuncts will herd under this short definition, that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived."
Click here for the complete text.
Click here for more info on Swift
Thanks to Paul Sands for this info!
Alexander Pope
Poet
1688-1744
Spenser was likely thinking of Epistle IV of Pope's "An Essay On Man" in which he discusses
false notions of happiness saying:
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Click here for the full text.
Click here for even more info on the works of Alexander Pope.
Chapter 35
Hawk: "Officially you are here as James B. Hickock."
Spenser:"James Bitler Hickock?"
Hawk: "Un huh. Quirk's idea."
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickock was killed by Jack Mc Call in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, on
August 2, 1876. Hickock was shot in the back of the head while playing poker and holding Aces and eights (two pairs) ever since
known as the "dead man's hand."
Click here to view a picture of his grave marker which is next to that of Clamity Jane.
Chapter 35
"The cops and the robbers," I said.
"Changes places and handy dandy," Quirk said.
"Well," I said. "Your literate son of a bitch."
Quirk: "I heard you say it once. I got no idea what it means"
William Shakespere: King Lear
Act 4, Scene 6
"Hark in thine ear: change places, and handy-dandy,
which is the justice, which is the thief?"
For the complete text, click here.
Chapter 36
He ain't heavy," Hawk said. "He's my brother."
From the 1938 movie "Boys Town"
which starred Mickey Rooney (as Whitey Marsh) and Spencer Tracey (as Father Flanagan)?
Click here for more info on the film.
Chapter 36
Susan: "I was able to rent a house."
Spenser:"In your name?"
Susan: "Mr. and Mrs. James B. Hickock"
Spenser:"I jerked my head toward Hawk. "Who's he," I said, "Deadwood Dick?"
Nate Love, better know as "Deadwood Dick,"
was born a salve in Tennessee, when he got his freedom from slavery,
Nate went to Texas and hired out his
services to a ranch on the Palo Duro River in the Texas Panhandle.
In 1876, Nate's outfit made a cattle drive to the
Dakoto Territory, where Nate won the title for Rope throwing, Tying
bridles, Saddling Mustangs and the name "Deadwood Dick".
For more info, click here.
Chapter 39
But she had one huge ice-cream-and-chocolate-cake-and-fudge-sauce thing,
which for Susan was an Isadora Duncan-esque act of joyful abandon.
Isadora Duncan
"The founder of modern dance"
Duncan's motivation for dance was to
"express the feelings and emotions of humanity" and thus her dance movements
emanate from the soul to become an embodiment of individuality and
extreme passion.
Click here to learn more.
Chapter 43
"I'm not sure what I'm going to do, Suze. Some things become self evident
as they develop. Readiness is all."
Hamlet (William Shakespeare)
Act 5 Scene II
Hamlet speaking to Horatio:
Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?
Click here for the complete text of the play.
Chapter 47
You got a phone number you can be reached at?" he said.
I gave him Patricia Utley's number.
"Ask for Mr. Vance, " I said.
Philo Vance
Fictional detective of the 1920's and 30's created by S. S. Van Dine.
Click here for a complete list of Philo Vance Novels
Chapter 47
Spenser:"It's me," I said to Rugar. "Lazarus...come back to tell you all."
"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
T. S. Eliot
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.
Chick here for the complete text.
Thanks to Paul Sands for this info!
Who is Lazarus:
The Bible: Book of John
Chapter 11
Verses 1-46
(41) Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid.
And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.
(42) And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by
I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.
(43) And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.
(44) And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin.
Click here for the complete text.
Chapter 52
... and a copy of the recipe written in Susan's pretty illegible hand on the back of a paperback copy of
Civilization and Its Discontents.
Civilization and Its Discontents
by Sigmund Freud,
How can people be happy in society if they have
to give up fundamental satisfactions? How can
society avoid self-destruction if it only exists by
denying basic desires? Freud did not propose
answers to these questions but thought that by
asking them we might better protect ourselves
from our most dangerous impulses. In addition, Freud had begun emphasizing the Ñhuman
instinct of aggression and self-destructionæ
in the wake of World War I. He called this
instinct the ÑDeath Driveæ or Thanatos.
Click here for the more info.
Click here to view an image of the originam manuscript.
Chapter 56
"Pygmalion," I said.
"Something like that. It fosters dreadful resentments within a family."
Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus who fell in love with a statue of his own making,
kissed the ivory statue and thought the kisses were returned. He talked to it with
words of love and brought to it the kind of gifts that are thought to please girls,
such as shells and pebbles, little birds and flowers of all colors. Besides all
this he also draped it with robes, put rings upon its fingers and a necklace
around her neck. And by night Pygmalion 1 put thestatue on a bed, called it
the consort of his bed and rested its head upon soft pillows. So when the time
came for the festival of Aphrodite to be celebrated, Pygmalion 1 visited it and prayed to the
goddess to have as wife one like his ivory maid. Aphrodite understood he did
not mean one like his ivory maid but the ivory maid itself. So when Pygmalion
returned home and kissed his ivory statue he discovered it was warm as he was kissing not ivory
but flesh.
Spenser's Libations
Saranac Black & Tan
White Buffalo
Red Hook Ale
Saranac Black & Tan
Un-named Draft
Rolling Rock
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