Slayground

Richard Stark
Slayground

Random House, 1971

A part of Friday Forgotten Books

Parker in the company of company Grofield and second-rate driver Laufman knock out armored car on a deserted road, but when they try to getaway Laufman rolls the car into the fence. Parker is the only one who does not lose consciousness, and he gets out of the car with a bag of money. Police are coming and there is absolutely nowhere to hide - except for Fun Island, an amusement park, closed for the winter. Parker climbs over the wall, hoping to get out later through another exit when a hype around the armored car slows down. Parker does not yet know that there is no way out of the park, and worse than that: Parker and a satchel of money were seen by two mobsters who met with two patrol cops to for the pay-off. And mobsters and cops will want to get this bag.

Those familiar with the previous books in the series about Parker without my recommendations know that you should read Stark, preferably starting with the first book of the series The Hunter. Slayground is rightly considered one of the best books by Stark, largely because Parker here is in an almost hopeless situation (though isn’t he always?). Never before Parker was not in the truest sense cornered where there is no exit. Moreover, by the middle of the novel Parker is left without his favorite weapon – a gun. But Parker, of course, is not one of those who surrender.

Slayground offers not only entertainment for a few hours, but makes fans of the series to ask several questions about the central character, Parker. I was curious, if Parker did not see any options to get out of the situation, would he choose to surrender to police, given that he is wanted for a couple of murders, or he would prefer death in a shootout?

Another issue worrying me in the course of reading can be formulated as follows: how this professional thief is always in a good shape, if he does not play any sports, doesn’t work out, does not go to the gym and spends his free time (or spent up to a certain time) on the beach sunbathing and sipping cocktails? It’s impossible to imagine Parker playing basketball with the company or in the gym lifting weights. The only exercise Parker makes when he comes to jobs, but it does not happen too often. Without the stunning physical form Parker just would not be able to do all that he did in the novel.

The Blackbird

Richard Stark
The Blackbird

Macmillan, 1969

A part of Friday Forgotten Books

After heist gone awry Grofield (Parker’s partner and hero of four novels, of which this is the third) ends up on a hospital bed surrounded by secret government agents. Thief and part-time actor is offered a chance to atone for his sins against the state. Charges of robbery will be lifted if Grofield helps the Secret Service to find out the secrets of the Third World countries. Somewhere in Canada a secret meeting of top officials of nine developing countries is planned and Grofield must ingratiate himself and find out what caused the meeting. Grofield is selected only because he is familiar with the leaders of the two countries - General Pozos and a politician Onum Marba (see The Damsel and The Dame). Grofield prefers intelligence job to prison term but plans to escape from the agents. He fails to escape and Grofield is delivered to Canada.

The premise of The Blackbird is very similar with the premise of another Stark novel The Handle. There FBI agents forced Parker to work on them and rob the casino. The Blackbird is more slowly than The Handle: almost half of the novel Grofield jokes and plays the fool, the sense of danger is not in sight, as if Grofield came to Canada at a ski resort. When Stark adds in his novels international intrigue, it is not very good. But the novel is good in that each Grofield’s choice is accompanied by the question "What would Parker have done in the Grofield place?".

Closer to the finale the book gains speed and Grofield has to make a difficult moral choice. The Blackbird, perhaps, is on the same level with The Damsel: entertaining, but far from ideal.

The Sour Lemon Score

Richard Stark
The Sour Lemon Score

Gold Medal, 1969


A part of Forgotten Books Friday


Parker and three accomplices robs the bank and then go to an abandoned farm, where they have to sit out and share the loot. In the house one of the accomplices, George Uhl, kills two others and almost kills Parker, but Parker manages to jump out of the window, however, losing his gun. Hiding in the woods, Parker, unarmed, can only watch as Uhl sets fire to the house and one of the cars, and leaves on the other.

Parker gets to the town, where there was a robbery, asks Claire to wire him money and leaves twon. Parker needs to find the son of a bitch Uhl and pick up the share that belongs to Parker. The search is complicated by the fact that Uhl is relatively new in the game, he was only in for six robberies and no one really knows him or anything about him.

This is a solid Parker novel, at the same time an example of that Parker has mellowed in Gold Medal books. For example, moneyless and gunless Parker does not have to rob and steal: Claire wires him money. He even buys, not steal cars. Or take a truth serum, first used on Parker and then by Parker. What are the chances that Parker would use serum instead of fists? This serum is clearly from the repertoire of Westlake, not Stark. I wil be silent about the finale, when Parker catches Uhl (spoiler, yeah, but this review is written for those who have already read the book).

If you do not pay attention to these "soft spots" then The Sour Lemon Score is quite a solid read. The plot has a few borrowings from the previous books, but it’s not really a shortcoming.

The Sour Lemon Score is often regarded as the best of the four Gold Medal Parkers, but I will name the best The Green Eagle Score, more unexpected and more violent book.

The Dame

Richard Stark
The Dame

University Of Chicago Press, 2012
(originally published in 1969)

Alan Grofield, an actor, a professional thief, and - sometimes – a partner of Parker, arrives in Puerto Rico to provide a certain service as a favor to a recent acquaintance. Grofield rents a car and follows the instructions on a piece of paper traveling to a remote ranch where Grofield meets surly middle-aged woman keeping a secret, why would she need a holder of certain skills as Grofield. The thief is not going to play the game: he leaves to go back to the airport, but after meeting with several mobsters returns to the inhospitable hostess, threatening her with a pistol, demanding from her to tell what's going on. The lady says that Grofield’s services are no longer needed, and promises to send him back in the morning. But by the morning the lady is dead, and then there is her husband, mobster, with the conviction that his favorite, but soon-to-be ex-wife has been killed by Grofield. The actor and the thief would have to convince the angry husband that the lady was not killed by him, but one of her guests.

The Dame was written under the pseudonym Richard Stark, although Westlake could easily put his own name on the cover. It was enough to give the hero a new name instead of Grofield, throw away anything that links books about Grofield with books about Parker. As a result, The Dame is what would happen if you connect Westlake’s hard-boiled early novels with his later humorous books. Grofield here is a kind of Poirot with thieving propensities (I wanted to write - with a criminal record, but Grofield has never been caught by the police), and a developed sense of humor.

The tone of the novel is very lightweight and a little reminiscent of the style of the Parker novels, even the familiar four-part structure of the novel is broken. The book is written without dividing into parts, and the plot is a straight line, without the usual Parker's flashbacks and changes of perspective.

Compared with the Parker novels, this is not entirely successful. But Westlake did not write bad books, so The Dame is plenty of fun, after all.