Robert B. Parker Quotes
Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know.
Parker, Robert B. Sudden Mischief. Putnam, 1998.
Eaton was in the Middle East and at the time that region was a part of the Ottoman Empire controlled by the Turks.
Note the egalitarian and democratic nature of the method of selection of military officers. This was typical of frontier thinking—the men who were putting their lives on the line should have a say in who their leaders would be. The Governor and the legislature could only select the top officers like the Adjutant General or the Major General. Congress had retained the power to appoint general officers but allowed them and the civilian secretaries of the armed services to select all other officers. The latter enabled wealthy people to be appointed officers without any necessary competence and many even in the Civil War in effect bought their appointments by paying for the uniforms or bringing weapons. While America became more democratic and egalitarian over its first two centuries, the appointment of military officers is the one area where it became less democratic and egalitarian. The election of officers so popular in many states was gradually and finally abolished.
Socioeconomic class was a major factor in the Continental Army just as it was in the British Army. New York, unlike New England, did not have the clear-cut majority in favor of independence. Most of the working class at this stage had no opinion on independence as they did not need to and were not of the social class that had been discussing and arguing about the relationship with England. The upper class had been discussing the issue for some time and were polarized into Patriot and Loyalist sympathies. When the Patriots of New York voted to raise its first Regiment, the first people to volunteer were the men of the upper class who had been debating the question for some time. Because of their social class, they had to be officers. The lower classes got into the intellectual and political debate later, and they too were divided. The Patriots among them then volunteered to provide the privates and other enlisted men to the NY regiment. But the early contingents of New Yorkers were very top heavy with officers. While not as rigid as the Continental Army, the modern American Armed Services are still affected by this tradition. While there are many exceptions, there is still a strong correlation between military rank and socioeconomic family status.
Robert Brown Parker was an American writer of fiction, primarily of the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character was also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre.
