Features Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property by Mike Lupica

By R.G. Belsky

Mike Lupica is one of the most popular and longest-running sports columnists in the country. Mike Lupica is also the author of HOT PROPERTY – the latest Spenser book in the beloved series about an iconic Boston PI created by the late Robert B. Parker – and many other best-selling thrillers. Yes, both are the same Mike Lupica. Talk about two great careers!

So how does Lupica balance both roles at the same time?

“I’m only writing two columns a week,” he laughs when we ask him the question during an interview with THE BIG THRILL. “Like (legendary baseball manager) Sparky Anderson once said, I know how to do it now.”

And whether he’s writing his sports column for the New York Daily News or writing a thriller novel—he also writes a series of thrillers these days with James Patterson—Lupica says his approach is basically the same.

“The newspaper column is the best possible training to be a novelist. I think in 1000 words bursts, that doesn’t sound like a lot of work to me. You have to use dialogue, you have to grab the readers; and that discipline has stayed with me my entire life.”

This is the 10^th Parker book that Lupica has done – starting with the Sunny Randall series, then Jesse Stone and now Spenser. “The reception has been tremendous from the passionate Parker fans. It’s an honor and blast to do it.”

He says that carrying on Robert B. Parker’s writing legacy is especially important to him because the two were very close before Parker’s sudden death of a heart attack in 2010 which happened while he was writing at his desk.

Mike Lupica

“We were friends. One year I did a piece on a Yankees vs. Red Sox series, interviewed him and it touched off a friendship. Most of our emails involved baseball. We emailed a lot during the baseball season. He was great to know. When he died, it was the same feeling I had when Wilt Chamberlain died. He was so big and full of life. To find out he died at his desk was pretty amazing.”

In HOT PROPERTY – the second Spenser book Lupica has done after several earlier ones penned by Ace Atkins – one of the most well-known characters in the series, hard-driving and controversial lawyer Rita Fiore, is shot and nearly killed by an unknown assailant. With her life hanging in the balance, Spenser’s quest to find out who did it and why leads to a tangled web of lies and deceit and betrayal.

We asked Lupica how much of the Spenser in this new book he believed came from himself – and how much from the original character Parker created back in the 1970s and has now lasted through 52 books.

“I like to think that people can’t tell where he (Parker) ends and I begin. The sound and the attitude are the same. You read my newspaper column, and you’ll see the voices are pretty similar.  Nobody told me how to do Spenser. I had an image of exactly who he was, what he was going to do. I just feel I got handed the baton, and I believe he would be very pleased by the way these books have turned out. Bob’s voice has been in my head for my entire life. From the first Sunny Randall book, I was in a comfort zone. I felt like I belonged there.”

Why does he think Spenser has been so popular with readers for so long? “Because in addition to being the toughest guy in the room, he is literate, he is funny – I think what sets him apart is his sense of humor – and he is as much as any character the classic knight-errant.  He lives by a code that is as old as the Old West.”

Even though the character has been around now for nearly a half century, Spenser (as well as partner Hawk and his longtime love Susan and the other familiar people in his life) haven’t really aged – other than a few references to getting older. “That was not a decision I made, that was a decision Parker made,” Lupica says. “Their ages are fixed in time.”

Which is just fine with him: “Writing is a way not to get old. Why should our character? I’m not reinventing the wheel, Bob already invented it, I’m just keeping it spinning.”

In addition to the Parker books, Lupica is also well known among thriller fans for the series of best-selling books he has been writing in recent years with James Patterson. Four of the Patterson-Lupica thrillers have come out already, including Hard to Kill this past summer.

“We’re extremely close friends,” Lupica says of his relationship with Patterson. “I’m lucky to be working with the great James Patterson. I learned so much about story telling from him. We talk five or six times a day, our wives are friends too. It’s been an unbelievable blessing to work with him.”

Before the Parker and Patterson books, Lupica wrote more than 50 fiction books for young men about fictional sports and heroes which he says proudly were “incredibly successful.” He has also written sports biographies about people like Reggie Jackson and Bill Parcells. And he was a familiar face on television for many years on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters and other sports programs.

Looking back on all he has accomplished, Lupica said in all began with newspapers: “Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill were my heroes, I wanted to come to NY and write a column and then write backs like them. I was blessed to have them down the hall. Pete became one of the dear friends of my life. And everything I’ve been able to do started with the fact that I could write a newspaper column.”