The Godwulf Manuscript

By Robert B. Parker

After listening to every Spenser novel I could get my hands on at the local library, I decided to try reading this series from the beginning.  The Godwulf Manuscript is Parker’s first published novel and is the first entry in the Spenser series.  All of the Spenser novels I listened to were Parker’s latest works and were all equally good.  This one—surprisingly—is just as good.  I guessed that Parker’s first novel would be somewhat uneven since he probably hadn’t established his “voice” yet.  Not so.  This book is as good as any of his latest Spenser books with tight situations, masses of enigmatical and seemingly unrelated clues and murder.  And of course, wisecracks.

Spenser is hired by a down and out university to find a stolen illuminated manuscript—a book of great historical and literary value.  A ransom of $100,000 has been demanded for it, which is somewhat enigmatical: it can’t be sold since

1. Anyone interested in buying it would instantly recognize it’s stolen
2. The university is not a well-healed one: it can’t even begin to afford the ransom

It’s vital to find the manuscript quickly because if not kept under very precise environmental conditions, it will quickly deteriorate and be worthless to anyone.

It isn’t long, however, before someone ends up murdered and because of who he is, Spenser has to solve it, whether anyone wants him to or not.  Eventually several shadowy figures are involved in a conspiracy that implicates even some officials from the university.  Just as we think we’re beginning to understand things, more clues and information emerge that totally destroy our previous theories and Spenser has to try and piece them all together.

Though this book introduces us to Spenser, Parker doesn’t dwell on giving a verbose history, but just hints at his past life and what led him into the role of a private eye.  We learn that he was a police officer, but aren’t told why he left the force exactly, just that he had a hard time taking orders.  We learn that he served in Korea and was taught some observation techniques there, but aren’t given a whole narrative of his experiences there.  But nonetheless, we learn just enough about Spenser to admire his approach to crime solving.  By the end of the book, though we don’t know every detail of Spenser’s life, he is a complete character with a personality and an admirable morality.

The book does have some anachronisms that have to be taken into account, but they weren’t anachronisms when Parker wrote it, the early 1970’s.  But the reader has to understand that the Spenser timeline is somewhat screwy.  While over the course of the Spenser novels the characters have aged maybe ten years, here is the real world, about 30 years have passed.  Yet Parker includes current popular culture artifacts in his latest Spenser novels.  This is all explained on the Internet (for example on Wikipedia and bullets-and-beer.com).  So while Spenser is about 38 in this first novel, he is now (in 2008) about 50.  If only all of us could age so gracefully.  So, if you read this excellent Spenser novel, keep in mind that it is taking place in the late hippie era.

External links

• Parker's page on The Godwulf Manuscript.
• The Godwulf Manuscript on Wikipedia