Book Notices | The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark / The Mourner by Richard Stark

Richard Stark, The Man with the Getaway Face

Amazon   This is the second of 24 Parker novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). Parker isn't the kind of protagonist you root for, exactly. He's a criminal, a thief and sometime killer. He's amoral. He's not very nice to women—or men, for that matter. But he's very professional, and there's something compelling about watching him plan and execute crimes. And since the early Parker novels were written in the 1960s, there's an added historical interest to them. They're gritty and dirty, and everything goes down in a simpler, meaner, pre-traffic camera world, in big hulking Chevies and Fords. In this outing, we're along for the ride as Parker plans an armored car heist and deals with an unexpected problem related to his recent facelift. I doubt I'd ever do it, but it would be fun to read all 24 Parker books in order, one after the other, and since they're fast reads, it wouldn't be a very difficult undertaking.

Richard Stark, The Mourner

Amazon   It took me a while to get interested in this fourth book in the Parker series, maybe because I was just coming off of book two, maybe because I'd skipped book three, but it just seemed a little disjointed. Eventually the story improved. What's going on is a little complicated, but in brief, Parker and his partner in crime Handy are going after a 15th century statue. They've got a buyer for it, but there's another party who's after the same mark for different reasons. And actually it's more complicated than that. Anyway, Parker is Parker—shrewd and good at what he does but not above making potentially fatal mistakes. The series continues to interest me, but after this one, probably less so than previously.