Hard-Boiled in Hollywood: Review

The great hard-boiled detectives were able to distance themselves from their origins in the pulp magazines because their disgust with the world of crime and criminals filled them with self-contempt and a bitter kind of self-knowledge rare, if not unique, in popular fiction. Over the past few novels Spenser's contentment with his physique, his gourmandizing and his love life had left him so self-satisfied that he could say (in ''Playmates'' last year), ''If I hadn't been me I'd have wished I were.'' A few books back, [Robert B. Parker]'s Boston detective who looks like Mike Hammer but acts like Alan Alda was so busy with fancy food and fancier sex that he had no time left for clue collecting and leg breaking. But now Spenser is taking care of business again. Last year's ''Playmates'' gave Spenser fans hope that their pistol-toting, Bartlett's-quoting hero was back in form, battering the occasional thug instead of just pounding veal into scaloppine. This summer's entry, ''Stardust,'' No. 18 in the series, is even better: classic Spenser, the tough guy who knows his tofu from his tacos.