101 Books, Number 97

Favorite Books from Throughout My Life

97: The Judas Goat, 1978 , by Robert B. Parker (1932–2010)

These Spenser novels? I was hooked

About the first time that I looked

Inside one. Read it. Had a ball.

And—very soon—I’d read them all.

And Judas Goat? Among the best!

(Not so, I fear, some of the rest.)

An ending with a great surprise—

Buh-buy to some, well, awful guys!

So … Parker hooked me, so I read

Them all—till he was dead.*

And not just Spenser—others, too!

His Westerns—loved them, through and through.**

His other series—ate them up.

Gobbled them—a hungry pup!

Was sad when Robert Parker died—

The death of favorites? Can’t abide.

I met him once—he signed some books

While I gave him admiring looks.

But now those days? They’ve all have gone.

So … I read others, on and on.

*Other writers are doing the Parker books now; I have not read—will not read—a single one of them.

**His other series: Jesse Stone, Sunny Randall, and the Westerns (featuring Virgil Cole & Everett Hitch)