Parker Books
It's payback time! Now a major motion picture from Paramount Pictures starring Mel Gibson as master theif Parker, who appeared in a series of celebrated crime novels between 1962 and 1974 and returned after 23 years in "Comeback", which was named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times. Crime writer Richard Stark is the pseudonym of Mystery Writers of American Grand Master Donald E. Westlake.
In New York there was a contract on his life. In Nebraska there was an unscrupulous plastic surgeon guarded by a punch-drunk fighter. And somewhere in New Jersey there was an armored car stuffed with money. In the middle of it all was Parker. Parker goes under the knife in The Man with the Getaway Face , changing his face to escape the mob and a contract on his life. Along the way he scores his biggest heist yet, but there’s a catch—a beautiful, dangerous catch who goes by the name Alma.
They wanted Parker dead—and a late-night visit from a hitman proved they meant business. Now Parker plans to get even—dead even. Armed with a new face and his usual iron will, Parker is declaring a coast-to-coast war. In The Outfit , Parker goes toe-to-toe with the mob, hellbent on taking him down. The notorious lone wolf has some extra tricks up his sleeve, and the entire underworld will learn an unforgettable lesson: whatever Parker does, he does deadly.
The Mourner is a story of convergence—of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents. Hired by a shifty dame who has something he needs, Parker will find out just who intends to bury whom—and who he needs to kill to finish the job.
It was an impossible crime: knock off an entire town—a huge plant payroll, all the banks, and all the stores—in one night. But there was one thief good enough to try—Parker. In The Score , Parker takes on his biggest job yet. All he needs are the right men, the right plan, and the right kind of help from Lady Luck. But as everyone knows, you can never count on that last one. This chilling caper could either be the perfect crime… or a set-up that would land him in jail — for life.
They say the past always catches up to you—but if he can help it, Parker won’t let his. In The Jugger , an old contact who could blow Parker’s cover tells Parker he’s in trouble — then turns up dead. With Parker’s skeletons on the verge of escaping from their closet, he must put the pieces together—at any cost—before it’s too late.
The robbery was a piece of cake. The getaway was clean. The only thing left to do is split the cash—then it all goes wrong. In The Seventh , the heist of a college football game turns sour and the take is stolen from right under Parker’s nose. With the cops on his tail, Parker must figure out who crossed him—and how he can pay the culprit back.
In The Handle , Parker is enlisted by the mob to knock off an island casino guarded by speedboats and heavies, forty miles from the Texas coast. With double-crosses and double-dealings from the word go, Parker knows the line between success and failure on this score would be exactly the length of the barrel of a .38.
When it comes to heists, Parker believes in some cardinal rules. On this job, he breaks two of them: never bring a dame along—especially not one you like—and never, ever, work with amateurs. Nevertheless, with the help of a creepy coin collector named Billy, and the lure of a classy widow, he agrees to set up a heist of a coin convention. But Billy’s a rookie with no idea how to pull off a score, and the lady soon becomes a major distraction. The Rare Coin Score marks the first appearance of Claire, who pulls off her own heist on Parker's heart—while together they steal two million dollars worth of coins.
In The Green Eagle Score , Parker cuts his vacation with Claire short with a new job: stealing the entire payroll of an Air Force base in upstate New York. With help from Marty Fusco, fresh out of the pen, and a smart aleck finance clerk named Devers, Parker tries to shorten the odds on the risky job. But the ice is thinner than Parker likes to think—and a wrench always gets thrown in the works.
A corrupt African colonel has converted half his country’s wealth into diamonds and smuggled them to a Manhattan safe house. Four upstanding citizens plan to rescue their new nation by stealing the diamonds back—with the help of a “specialist”: Parker. Will Parker break his rule against working with amateurs and help them because his woman would be disappointed if he doesn’t? Or because three hired morons have threatened to kill him and his woman if he does? They thought they were buying an advantage, but what they get is a predated death certificate.
Bank robberies should run like clockwork, right? If your name’s Parker, you expect nothing less. Until, that is, one of your partners gets too greedy for his own good. The four-way split following a job leaves too small a take for George Uhl, who begins to pick off his fellow heisters, one by one. The first mistake? That he doesn’t begin things by putting a bullet in Parker. That means he won’t get the chance to make a second. One of the darkest novels in the series, this caper proves the adage that no one crosses Parker and lives.
The hunter becomes prey, as a heist goes sour and Parker finds himself trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters, in Slayground . There are no exits from Fun Island. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker can’t afford a single miscalculation. He’s low on bullets and making it out alive is a long shot—but, as anyone who’s crossed his path knows, no one is better at playing higher stakes with shorter odds.
Deadly Edge bids a brutal adieu to the 1960s as Parker robs a rock concert, and the heist goes south. Soon Parker finds himself—and his woman, Claire—menaced by a pair of sadistic, strung-out killers who want anything but a Summer of Love. Parker has a score to settle while Claire’s armed with her first rifle—and they’re both ready to usher in the end of the Age of Aquarius.
Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder, and dove off his chair to the left. When a job looks like amateur hour, Parker walks away. But even a squad of seasoned professionals can't against human error in a high-risk scam. Can an art dealer with issues unload a truck of paintings with Parkers aid? Or will the heist end up too much of a human interest story, as luck runs out before Parker can get in on the score? Parker is refreshingly amoral, a thief who always gets away with the swag.Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly Westlake knows precisely how to grab a reader, draw him or her into the story, and then slowly tighten his grip until escape is impossib
The sixteenth Parker novel, Butcherâ s Moon is more than twice as long most of the master heisterâ s adventures, and absolutely jammed with the action, violence, and nerve-jangling tension readers have come to expect. Back in the corrupt town where he lost his money, and nearly his life, in Slayground , Parker assembles a stunning cast of characters from throughout his career for one gigantic, blowout job: startingâ and finishingâ a gang war. It feels like the Parker novel to end all Parker novels, and for nearly twenty-five years thatâ s what it was. After its publication in 1974, Donald Westlake said, â Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone.â  Featuring a new introduction by Westlakeâ s close friend and writing partner, Lawrence Block, this classic Parker adventures deserve a place of honor on any crime fanâ s bookshelf. More than thirty-five years later, Butcher's Moon still packs a punch: keep your calendar clear when you pick it up, because once you open it you won't want to do anything but read until the last shot is fired.
A robbery of a Christian Crusade executed in the heat of the night comes off without a hitch, but it seems that the evangelist, the cops, the criminals, and the church's security officer are all after the loot, in a dark world where no one can be trusted. 20,000 first printing.
Following on the heels of Comeback, a New York Times Notable Book, a new Parker adventure finds the master thief deep in troubled waters when his plan to hijack a riverboat casino goes awry. 20,000 first printing.
Melander likes to do things flashy. When Parker finds himself working with Melander on a bank heist in a mid-sized midwestern city, his job is throwing a Molotov cocktail into a gas station. The resulting explosion sends the cops and fire trucks to the east side of town, while Melander and his gang plunder the bank on the west side. Parker doesn't care for flashy. And he doesn't care for Melander's plan for a new heist, one that will clean out Palm Beach of a lot of very expensive jewelry. But what Parker really dislikes is Melander's intention to use the proceeds from the bank job to capitalize the Palm Beach job . . . including Parker's cut. Melander is very polite about Parker's not wanting to go in on the Florida heist, and very sincere about paying Parker his share . . . with interest . . . after the jewelry job goes down. But that's not the way Parker works. Now he's tailing the gang down South, with his own plan for getting his own back . . . and the entire swag of gems besides.
Parker put down the body and answered the phone. And from that moment on he had two jobs to do. One was to rob a remote Montana lodge where a dot-com billionaire hid stolen art treasures in his basement. The other was to find out why a hit man had come to his home -- and who had sent him. Pa
Stuck in jail without bail while awaiting trial, Parker builds a network among his fellow cons to assist him in getting out of trouble, but when he becomes involved in a heist set up by one of his co-conspirators, Parker and his fellow escapees suddenly find themselves on the run for their lives. 20,0000 first printing.
Master criminal Parker is back and in deeper, darker trouble than ever before. The classic anti-hero is forced to use every trick in his dubious arsenal to avoid having to pay the ultimate price for his questionable line of work.
Sometimes mystery master Donald E. Westlake is the author of uproarious crime capers. Sometimes he has a mean streak-and its name is Parker. From his noir classic The Man with the Getaway Face to his recent novel Nobody Runs Forever , whenever Westlake writes as Stark, he lets Parker run loose-a ruthless criminal in a world of vulnerable "straights." On a sunny October afternoon a man is running up a hill. He's not dressed for running. Below him are barking police dogs and waiting up ahead is a stranger-with a rifle, a life full of regrets, and a parrot at home who will mutely witness just how much trouble the runner, Parker, can bring into an ordinary life. The rabbit hunter is Tom Lindahl, a small-town lonely heart nursing a big-time grudge against the racetrack that fired him. He knows from the moment he sees Parker that he's met a professional thief-and a man with murder in his blood. Rescuing Parker from the chase hounds, Lindahl invites the fugitive into his secluded home. He plans to rip off his former employer and exact a deadly measure of revenge-if he can get Parker to help. But Tom doesn't know Parker and that the desperate criminal will do anything to survive-no matter who has to die...
"[One] of the greatest writers of the twentieth century...Richard Stark, real name Donald Westlake...His Parker books form a genre all their own." --John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea Master criminal Parker takes another turn for the worse as he tries to recover loot from a heist gone terribly wrong. In Nobody Runs Forever , Parker and two cohorts stole the assets of a bank in transit, but the police heat was so great they could only escape if they left the money behind. In this follow-up novel, Parker and his associates plot to reclaim the loot, which they hid in the choir loft of an unused country church. As they implement the plan, people on both sides of the law use the forces at their command to stop Parker and grab the goods for themselves. Though Parker's new getaway van is an old Ford Econoline with "Holy Redeemer Choir" on its doors, his gang is anything but holy, and Parker will do whatever it takes to redeem his prize, no matter who gets hurt in the process. .