RIP Robert B. Parker

He of Spenser fame, another prolific author in the genre that includes, of course, the late great Donald E. Westlake.

Parker dead at 77.

I've cut back on writing about personal items here. Once you become conscious of having readers, you're also more conscious of what you're revealing. And sometimes, (revealing) less is more.

I never want to post something half-heartedly, conscious of the fact that I'm just putting it up for show. What you see here, I want you to see. Writing is a fun game like that... and there's naturally lots of styles of players.

So let me consciously reveal this: I've just started reading Westlake. I know, I know -- late to the game, y'all been recommending him to me for years. Just wanted to share, that's where I'm at today: discovering the newly found world of Westlake*, from 361 on. A throwback to another (acknowledgedly fictional) time.

And now Parker, for the bookend finish.

Mr. Parker died at his writing desk, Brann said. Tests are pending, she added, but it appears that Mr. Parker suffered a heart attack Monday morning while his wife, Joan, was out of their house.

"She saw him early in the morning, went out for her exercise, came back an hour later, and he was gone," (his agent Helen) Brann said. "He was at his desk, as he so often was."

Pounding out up to five pages a day, Mr. Parker kept a pace few could match. Pressed for his secret, he made it sound simple.

"The art of writing a mystery is just the art of writing fiction," he told the Globe in 2007. "You create interesting characters and put them into interesting circumstances and figure out how to get them out of them. No one is usually surprised at the outcome of my books."

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* to me, lucky thing.