A Very Violent Man

Richard Stark’s Parker Would Just as Soon Kill You

By John Hood

It’s not every weekend that I read nine books. Then again, it’s not every week when I receive nine books so damn worth reading either. Not all at once anyway. And good thing too, ’cause if I did, I might never leave the house.

Talk about dynamite. This box was so explosive, I’m surprised it didn’t blow-up in the UPS man’s hands. But of course when you’re talking about the writer Richard Stark, well, incendiary is a given.

Or it was a given, before last New Year’s Eve, when Donald Westlake went the way of the angels. See Stark was one of Westlake’s noms de plume; so when he died, they both died. Thankfully, neither of them left us in any kinda lurch, pulp-wise.

Westlake, among many other things, created a series of comic crime capers which featured the ruefully inept (and accidentally heroic) John Dortmunder. Deeply light-hearted and keen to a crisp, they’re a dashing way to look at the underside of life – and incredibly enjoyable to boot.

Stark, in contrast, was the scribe behind a cold-blooded, cut-throat thief named Parker, a very violent man who was anything but funny. If you’ve seen Mel Gibson in “Payback,” then you saw one version of Parker in film. If you caught Lee Marvin in “Point Blank,” you saw him better – and a whole lot closer to the merciless soul he really is.

Both of those films were based on “The Hunter” (University of Chicago Press, $14), the first in what would eventually be a run of 24 titles featuring the peripatetic heist man. A consummate professional linked in with a shady network of specialists, Parker would pull one big heist in a different part of the country just about every year, and then fly off to live the lush life, usually to Miami, where he never knocked anyone off.

For the most part, Parker and his pals would prey on banks, armored cars and other well-endowed representatives of the institutional state. But at the beginning of his run he’d been double-crossed and left for dead by a mobbed-up member of The Outfit, and he was forced to force their hand. Mobsters don’t like to be forced to do anything, of course, especially organized mobsters, and they put a price on Parker’s head. So he slips off to Nebraska for a makeover (“The Man with the Getaway Face”), and when that still doesn’t get them off his back, he puts out the word among his pals that it’s open season on gangsters, and starts a spree they won’t soon recover from (“The Outfit”).

Prior to that time Parker and his ilk have always assumed a sorta steal-and-let-steal attitude with organized crime. After all, both are on the same side of the law. So after a series of seemingly well-orchestrated rip-offs, he finally forces The Outfit to call a truce, and Parker gets back to what he does best: knocking off legitimate targets.

Well, supposedly legitimate targets. As everybody knows, even the most aboveboard bank usually has something nefarious going on somewhere, so it’s really all relative. But whatever the target, the job’s never without hubris. In fact at one point Parker assembles a team in order to rob an entire town (“The Score”), which is about as bold a move as a badass can get.

And Parker is indeed a badass. Adherent of a code that seems to have gone the way of the desperado, he’s a man of few words, distinct objectives, unflinching loyalty and murderous resolve. Yes, Parker would just as soon kill you, but only for damn good cause.

The nine titles I so swiftly flew through represent the pinnacle of American pulp, and the University of Chicago Press indeed needs to be applauded for so coolly repackaging the series for all the world to read. If you’re looking for purposeful violence and crafty exposition, it doesn’t get any better than Stark. And if you, like me, are a sucker for the time when men were men and unafraid to shoot, then Parker’s your kinda man.

This, my friends, is reading in black-and-blue. And it’s worth every bruise it delivers. I just can’t wait for the next batch to hit print so I can steal away for another knockout weekend.

For more information on Parker and the series from University of Chicago Press visit violentworldofparker.com and press.uchicago.edu.

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