It should come as no surprise to a reader of The Godwulf Manuscript (1974) to discover striking similarities between it and the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald, particularly when he remembers that Parker wrote his doctoral dissertation on the novels of those three writers. What is surprising, however, is the extent to which he has managed to stake out for himself an original claim to the territory already overrun by would-be successors to the three earlier masters of the hard-boiled detective novel. Parker manages the tricky task of evoking echoes of all three writers while at the same time creating a character and developing a style that are uniquely his.

The Godwulf Manuscript introduces Spenser, a thirty-seven-year-old Boston private detective. Physically fit, six-feet-one, one hundred and ninety-five pounds, an ex-heavyweight boxer who can bench press two hundred and fifty pounds ten times, Spenser is also...