Boylston and Berkeley

In the early-to-mid ’90s, I worked frequently as a freelance copy editor for a Boston advertising agency. It took up several floors in a spectacular wedding cake of an office building at 420 Boylston Street, on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley. Across Berkeley was an enormous, soullessly modern office building. Diagonally across the intersection was the old Museum of Fine Arts building, which had long ago become the home of Louis, a high-end menswear store. Across Boylston was a row of small buildings with an Au Bon Pain (still there) on the ground floor.

I mention this in so much detail for just one reason: Robert B. Parker died yesterday, and his fictional private eye, Spenser — by all the clues in his books — worked in that same building, or rather, in a fictional building at that location. It couldn’t be anywhere else. Spenser says repeatedly that his office is on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley. He talks about being within sight of Louis. And in several early books, he talks about being able to look into the windows of the office building across the street, and later refers to how that building came down to make way for new construction. I remember standing in the conference room with one of my fellow copy editors, looking out at the intersection and agreeing that we had to be in the right place.

The ad agency is long gone, and now, so is Parker. But Spenser, first name unknown, lover of Susan, beer, and Dunkin’ Donuts, is still with us, and always will be.

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