I love the old-time, private detective pulp novels, and so I’m going to bore you with amateur drivel about the most famous ones. Please don’t humor me. Just go away and come back tomorrow, unless you envision the possibility of appreciating my shallow insights. I shall seek to sound officious, but don’t be fooled.

I just finished these detective novels, in this order:

• The Way Some People Die, one of Ross MacDonald’s 18 Lew Archer novels.
• Trouble is My Business, a quartet of stories by Raymond Chandler starring P.I. Philip Marlowe.
• The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett’s only Sam Spade novel.

The contemporary and highly prolific Robert Parker, with his private investigator Spencer, is usually considered the heir to Raymond Chandler. I’ve read all but the latest Spencer novel (it sits on my shelf, a certain swell read). Chandler, in turn, is regarded as the heir to Dashiell Hammett. Usually getting left out is Ross MacDonald, who came after Chandler and whom Robert Parker adores. MacDonald, rightfully, is Chandler’s heir.

Philip Marlowe appears in nine books, while Same Spade appears only in The Maltese Falcon, plus a few short stories. Humphrey Bogart played Marlowe in “The Big Sleep” and Spade in “The Maltese Falcon.” If I remember right, he played them pretty much the same, which isn’t true to the books. Lew Archer and Philip Marlowe could be twins–smart-alecky, resourceful, contantly vexing the cops. But Spade is different: a strong-built fellow, blonde, quiet, mysterious, an explosive mean streak. Humorless. I absolutely loved The Maltese Falcon. Just wish Hammett had written as much about Spade as he did the unnamed Continental Op (another detective whom I really like, but alas, whom Bogart never portrayed).

Chandler writes with extraordinary wit, and every few pages comes a turn of phrase so clever and unique, you want to call someone up and say, “You’ve got to read this!” You want to write it down so you’ll never forget it, show it to your wife, post it on your blog. There are whole websites devoted to Chandlerisms. Gems like these:

• “I guess God made Boston on a wet Sunday.”
• “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class.¬† From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”
• “He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”
• “She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me.”
• “The streets were dark with something more than night.”
• “The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.”
• “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
• “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
• “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
• “The corridor which led to it had a smell of old carpet and furniture oil and the drab anonymity of a thousand shabby lives.”

A Chandler book deserves to be savored. Four Chandler novels remain on my shelf, unread, patiently awaiting their chance to delight me as much as the other five books. And yet, there’s something about MacDonald’s books that I almost prefer. Lew Archer brings practically nothing new to the genre, a rough clone of Marlowe. But the plots seem easier to follow than in Chandler and Hammett. Very accessible, and always fun. Often, his phrasing recalls Chandler.

But Parker is tops. In Spencer, he reinvented the private detective. Not only as a very tough guy, much tougher than Spade, but with an extraodinarily tough sidekick, Hawk. Plus a girlfriend, Susan, and a relationship that evolves over the course of the 30-some novels. A P.I. with an intellectual streak who likes to cook, and can sum up an entire personality by citing three characteristics. Spade, Marlowe, and Archer come from the same DNA, the stock that Hammett invented. But Spencer is a first. As was, for that matter, Sam Spade.