The Gritty Noir Parker Novels by Richard Stark

The Hunter (also published as Point Blank and Payback) introduces Parker to the world. 

A professional armed robber so laconic he makes Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name look like Groucho Marx, our rugged anti-hero is a big, rangy guy who moves with ‘ungainly efficiency’ and seems to be permanently clutching a wrench in one fist.  We never get to learn Parker’s other names or anything about his background — the man simply ‘is’. 

In this the series opener, a co-criminal makes the mistake of trying to rip him off. Violent mayhem ensues. Filmed — as Point Blank —by John Boorman in 1967 with Lee Marvin, so perfectly cast it’s hard to think of Parker without picturing him clattering down a corridor in his heavy-soled brogues.

Parker upset a major organised crime gang known simply as the Outfit during his search for vengeance in The Hunter. 

To try to shake them off his tail he undergoes plastic surgery. A change of looks doesn’t mean a change of personality, however. Parker remains a man who kills only when it is necessary, but finds it necessary pretty much all of the time. 

Teaming up with old pals Skimm and Handy McKay, Parker plots a brilliant armoured car robbery that soon turns sour thanks to the interference of a  an ambitious girlfriend.

Despite his change of looks Parker is still in the sights of the Outfit. They have put out a coast-to-coast contract on him. Other men might take the hint and flee the country. 

Parker, naturally, adopts the opposite approach and takes the fight straight to the men who want him dead — the Outfit’s top bosses. If the mobsters think being surrounded by dozens of armed henchmen will protect them from Parker, it’s only because they haven’t been paying attention.

With the Outfit finally squared away, Parker can get back to doing what he does best – planning and executing heists. In The Score he’s approached not just to rob an institution, but an entire small town – banks, stores and factory payroll. 

Parker assembles a crack crew that features another of Stark’s great creations, actor-turned-robber Alan Grofeld (A long time Parker associate, Grofeld also get to headline a few novels of his own — check out The Blackbird). 

The job runs like clockwork, until the man who set up the heist reveals his hidden and explosive agenda.

Short and percussive as a Mike Tyson left hook, The Rare Coin Score sees Parker setting up a job for a nervy coin dealer and getting stiffed by an old comrade. 

The dealer is eager to make a score so he can win the hand of the woman he loves. Her name is Claire, and it soon becomes clear she’s far more interested in Parker than she is in the dealer. 

Parker views his fling with Claire as just another one of his regular, use-and-throw-away relationships. But it turns out — to his surprise and ours – that the stylish and sexy Claire will stick around to become his long-term girlfriend.

Before that, though, there are double-crossers to take care of.

Back in the 1970s UK publisher Coronet marketed the Parker books with the strapline ‘A novel of violence by Richard Stark’. 

While it’s fair to say that none of the books make happy reading for pacifists, The Sour Lemon Score is undoubtedly one of the darkest and bloodiest in the 24-book series. When a bank robbery pulls in a disappointing pay-off, one of the thieves decides to up his share by rubbing out his fellow felons. 

He makes one big mistake: he doesn’t take out Parker first.

Stark wrote what seemed to be his last Parker novel, Butcher’s Moon in 1974. By then Westlake had embarked on the John Dortmunder novels and was in demand as a Hollywood scriptwriter. 

Two decades later, an encounter with the Irish crime writer John Banville – a massive Parker fan - persuaded the New Yorker to resurrect his greatest creation. Twenty-four years after his last heist, Parker returns in this cracking crime novel that sees our anti-hero and a gang of companions stealing the collection take of a TV evangelist from the sports stadium that’s hosting his revival meetings. It might be the perfect crime, but then somebody gets greedy.

The final three Parker novels – Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot, and Dirty Money — are interlocking and really ought to be read in sequence. 

However, this, the middle one of the trilogy, is a great standalone novel, too. Parker is on the run from cops pursuing him after a bank job goes sideways. He’s stopped at gunpoint by a mysterious loner. 

But the man isn’t interested in turning Parker over to the authorities for the reward money. He wants him to help pull off a revenge robbery on the employers who fired him. It’s a great premise executed with all of Stark’s trademark lethal panache. 

Ask the Parrot was published in 2006. Donald Westlake died two years later, leaving behind a legacy of brilliant and bloody page-turners.