The ultimate giveaway came when Robert B. Parker began running an author’s photo on his book jackets showing him in poses with his dog. For years, and over the course of a dozen or more novels in Parker’s compelling series featuring the Boston private eye Spenser, I had figured that Parker, in shaping Spenser’s personality and back story, had borrowed elements from his own life and grafted them on to his fictional guy Spenser. Parker had fought in the Korean War; so did Spenser.