RBP: I say, "Let's just have a new adventure and see where it goes." If I could do a wonderfully difficult and complicated case with a huge surprise ending, that's fine, but I have yet to think of one. I don't think I have that particular kind of talent.

I don't think Sherlock Holmes did either. I mean, if you didn't have Watson running around saying, "Oh my God, Holmes, that's brilliant!" you wouldn't have thought it was so brilliant. And Nero Wolf - who I love - and Archie serves that same function. I never understood how Wolf knew who did what, but whatever it is, I have yet to come up with a complicated, classic, surprise, shocking riddle story. I'd be perfectly to if I could think of one, but so far I haven't.

EB: Tell me a little bit about Hawk. He's just got a wonderful way about him, particularly in his dialogue, which is very urban, very street. How did Hawk come into being?

RBP: Well, he began in Promised Land as merely that book's worthy adversary. And then, I liked how it worked. I also liked that it allowed me to do my riff on race relations. And in the next book, when Spenser was in Europe chasing people around, he needed backup, and I thought, "Why doesn't he call that black guy from the last book?"

So Hawk came back, and it began to develop and so it's one of the charms of not pre-planning. Serendipity. When I first began, I started outline. After a while, I realized the outlining was limiting me, instead of helping me.

I make up Hawk's dialogue, I make up his street talk. When we did a movie called Small Vices, Shiek Mahmoud-Bey was playing Hawk, and I thought he was the best Hawk that we've ever had. He didn't do it again because he was working elsewhere and we couldn't get him for the other movies.

But he came and said, "Give me a tip. Tell me something about Hawk so I can play him better." And I said, "Hawk's magical." And I guess probably he is. He seems able to do whatever needs to be done. He seems able to understand whatever needs to be understood. And I find him fascinating, too, but his role will always be somewhat limited because I have to see him through Spenser's eyes. I'm not black enough to see him through his own eyes, or from the inside out.

Although, for a while I had the Hollywood reputation: Parker writes black good. [laughs] I mean, look at me: white Irish kid from Boston!

And when I did Double Deuce, which was about black street gangs, I made that up and I made up the language and everything. I talked to some people and did some research, but essentially I made it all up.