The Judas Goat is not [Robert Parker's] best book, but it is very good. Parker is one of those authors who … are always being compared with Chandler and Ross Macdonald …, and while the comparison is apt as a label for quality and tone, it no longer is very helpful, since Parker has established a voice of his own. The Judas Goat is tough, cynical, sexy in a realistic way, and just a mite sentimental, and it sends Parker's series detective, Spenser, off to London, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam to seek out (and as it happens, to destroy) a tiny band of terrorists who, in bombing a London restaurant, have maimed an American millionaire and killed his wife and daughters. Personal vengeance, stalking dogs, hounds of heaven, and yes judas goats are the subjects here, and it is all handled with taste and authenticity.

Robin Winks, in a review of...