| Title | : | The Mourner (Parker, #4) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0446677728 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780446677721 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1963 |
The Mourner (Parker, #4) Reviews
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When Parker was in the middle of a night of passion with Bett Harrow, he got attacked by a would-be assassin from the Outfit. Parker dealt with the guy, but Bett ended up sneaking away with a gun that had Parker’s prints on it. Since his prints are on file from an old arrest and Bett knows his best assumed identity, this could lead to big problems.
Turns out that Bett, who has a thing for the bad boys, has a rich daddy who wants to have a small statue worth a fortune stolen from a diplomat who doesn’t realize what he has. For a hefty fee and the return of the gun with his prints, Parker agrees to the job. However, the diplomat’s communist government thinks he’s been embezzling and sends their most trusted spy to settle the matter just as Parker and his comrade Handy McKay are setting up their theft. Will Parker be able to do the job and recover the incriminating gun?
This is another stand-out Parker story with the usual complications and double-crosses screwing with what should be a simple job. Stark (a/k/a Westlake) uses this one to give us a better idea of Parker’s code of ethics, such as it is. While Parker is always a no-nonsense pragmatist who is willing to do things like torture people for needed info, he considers it a wasteful and unpleasant way to do things. He also shows that if he makes a deal, and if the other party holds up their end, that Parker will keep his word. (Usually.) But if anyone double-crosses him, then he’ll stop at nothing to get what he’s owed.
Another surprising thing in this one is the loyalty he shows to Handy McKay. When circumstances make it appear that ditching Handy would be a safer and more profitable option for several reasons, Parker still sticks with Handy and does quite a bit for him. Maybe it’s because he’s the closest thing to a friend that Parker has, but it was a little surprising seeing the unsentimental thief stick his neck out for somebody else. -
"Westlake knows precisely how to grab a reader...escape is impossible." So wrote a Washington Post critic. Never truer than for The Mourner. Parker novels are divided into four parts and I dare anybody to stop after that climactic scene at the end of Part 2.
Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark injects two fresh elements in this, his fourth Parker novel: firstly, there's international espionage. Not exactly Robert Ludlum or John le Carré but the novel's action does include two intriguing officials from the Eastern European communist country of Klastrava (not a real country - don't try finding it on a map). More info on these gents below.
Secondly, the heist is for art, specifically a statue the size of the dingus from Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, a fifteenth century alabaster statue of a weeping monk. The inclusion of art throws yet another light on the character of Parker. As per one leading Westlake/Stark critic: “Art has absolutely no meaning to Parker. It does not exist for him. The Lost Mourner of Dijon might as well be a garden gnome from Walmart, as far as he’s concerned. He’s not a philistine, because a philistine has bad taste. Parker has no tastes of any kind when it comes to anything other than women–he’s not all that picky there in a pinch. Art is only meaningful to him as a potential source of income.”
I agree with Stephen King: reviewers tend to go overboard and give away far too much of the plot, especially bad form when the novel's a thriller. Since The Mourner contains surprises right from the first pages, I'll make a quick shift to spotlighting a quintet of characters that, in addition to Parker, of course, give this tale a special zest:
Handy McKay
Handy made prior appearances in The Man with the Getaway Face (Parker #2) and The Outfit (Parker #3). Parker thought Handy might be losing some of his heister spirit since Handy wants to own property and he sees Parker as his friend (Parker owns nothing and has no friends - snares to tie him down on both counts). But Handy's role in The Mourner and especially Parker's response to a life-and-death crisis involving Handy, makes us think hard about the illusive character of Parker. It appears Richard Stark will always remain one step ahead of his readers.
Bett the Blonde Bombshell
Twenty-nine-year-old Elizabeth Ruth Harrow Conway is a rich, super athletic, super sexy gal with a taste for danger and violence (think Uma Thurman in Kill Bill). Bett swiped a gun/murder weapon from Parker back in The Outfit and is now using the gun to blackmail Parker into doing what she wants - pulling off a heist for her dear Dad. Heads-up, Parker! When beautiful Bett told you directly, "You want to be very careful with me," she wasn't joking. On thing's for sure: this luscious, sweetie likes the strong ones.
Bett's Daddy
Ralph Harrow, age fifty-three, is a rich businessman who also happens to be an art collector and romantic at heart. And Ralph loves to talk and talk and talk - and his prime topic of conversation (at least in The Mourner): art history.
One of the more humorous scenes finds Ralph insisting Parker listen to his lengthy exposé on the history of the 16" sculpture he wants Parker to nab. Parker keeps repeating "just tell me what you want me to steal" but Ralph insists Parker hears him out. Parker does but only because daughter Bett (also in the hotel room) asks him to. "If it had been just the father he'd been dealing with, he'd squeeze the gun out of him now and throw him away. But daughter was tougher stuff."
Lepas Kapor
Kapor is the well mannered, well educated, articulate Klastrava embassy ambassador currently living in Washington, D.C. and handling important international purchases on behalf of his country. Similar to Ralph Harrow, Kapor is an art fancier and art collector focusing on medieval statuary. Through a reliable source, Ralph Harrow had found out Kapor currently has that weeping monk, one of the Missing Mourners of Dijon, in his possession. As we eventually discover, Lepas Kapor can be a very enterprising and creative gatherer of wealth in other forms.
Auguste Menlo
This fat man, age forty-seven, has much WWII military experience and currently holds the title of Inspector where he spies on his fellow Klastravan citizens (usually for political reasons). It has come to the attention of the Klastrava government that Kapor has been skimming monies for himself when he buys on behalf of his country. Thus, Klastrava sends Auguste Menlo to Washington.
Auguste Menlo's manner of speaking reminds me of Vladamir Nabokov's Charles Kinbote (Pale Fire) from the Eastern European country of Zembla (like Klastrava, also a made up country). And, like Charles Kinbote, Menlo is exceptionally well educated and attuned to art and the finer things in life. Added to this, Menlo can be a cool customer under pressure - and that's understatement. One of the novel's highlights: all the discussions and exchanges between eloquent Menlo and taciturn Parker.
Perhaps THE highlight of The Mourner is Richard Stark devoting all of Part 3 of the novel to following Menlo after that climatic scene at the conclusion of Part 2. We're given the details of Menlo's backstory along with Menlo handling various challenges in his odyssey through 1960s American culture and society, a vastly different world from which he's accustomed.
Another highlight: Menlo speaking with Ralph Harrow since both men appreciate talking about art and Ralph Harrow, American businessman, likes to think of himself as an art aficionado; matter of fact, Ralph might consider it one of his personal high points to engage with an honest to goodness European intellectual aesthete.
Both men are smart, no question. But there's smart and there's smart. And then there's Parker. To say more would be to say too much.
American author Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008 -
Somehow I missed writing a review of this book when I last read through the Parker series, but I just read it again for one of my book clubs and enjoyed it for at least the third time. This is the fourth entry in Stark's (Donald Westlake's) series featuring the amoral thief, Parker. Parker is "a heavy gun, in on one or two institutional robberies a year--a bank, or a payroll, or an armored car--just often enough to keep the finances fat..."
When Parker is planning a job or in the act of act of actually doing the job, he remains completely celibate, focusing all of his energy and attention on the job itself. Once the job is over, he finds an attractive woman and celebrates by making up for lost time.
Two months before this book opens, Parker had been in bed with Bett Harrow, a woman with very strong appetites of her own. At a most inauspicious time, a hitman broke into the room and attempted to kill Parker. The hit man failed, of course, but in all the confusion Harrow escaped from the room with a gun that can be traced back to the alias that Parker uses most often when he is living his normal civilian life.
The gun can tie Parker to a crime which would compromise the identity he has spent lot of time and energy developing. He wants the gun back and as this book opens, Harrow offers to return it--for a price of course. Harrow's father is a very wealthy man who collects unique works of art. He is anxious to acquire "The Mourner," a very valuable statuette with a long history and tradition. He wants Parker to steal the statuette from the collector who now owns it. In return, Parker will get the gun back along with $50,000.
Parker recruits his trusted friend, Handy McKay, to assist in the theft and, as always happens in one of these books, things immediately go sideways. The statuette is currently owned by a diplomat from a small communist country who is stationed in Washington, D.C. As Parker and McKay scout out the job, they realize that someone else is also targeting the diplomat for perhaps entirely different reasons. The discovery leads to a lot of collusion, confusion and, naturally, a double cross or two before things are all settled.
This is, clearly, Stark's homage to The Maltese Falcon, with "The Mourner" standing in for the falcon and the diplomat, known as "The Fat Man," playing the role that Sydney Greenstreet immortalized in the movie version of TMF. All in all, it's a lot of fun with some great twists and turns--a very good addition to an excellent series. -
The Mourner is the fourth Parker novel from Richard Stark, pretty much a stand-alone following the first three books that focus on Parker’s war with The Outfit. This novel is either a Maltese Falcon knock-off or homage, as you prefer. I think homage, though Parker is of course way more ruthless than Sam Spade. . . and the bad guy and not a detective. But as with Dashiell Hammett’s way more famous novel, there’s a statue that needs stealing, and a struggle between our (anti-)hero and two guys, Menlo and Kapor, of undetermined national origin (the Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet of the John Huston film). The accents of Menlo and Kapor are similar to Lorre and Greenstreet in the audio version I listened to today in the car. Physically the Menlo character is as rotund as Greenstreet. There’s a beautiful dame, of course, ex Beth Harrow, who is as ruthless as almost any of the men.
The guy who wants the statue stolen is a kind of art romantic, but to Parker the statue is just sixteen inches of alabaster, worth 50K to him. Aesthetics are superfluous to Parker; The Lost Mourner of Dijon might as well be a paint-by-number Elvis painting to him as long as Parker gets his pay day.
There’s a double cross, a two-timing broad, ruthless gunplay, but the tone sort of veers into a comic tone when the super-talkative Kapor and Menlo (the two foreign nationals) give Stark a chance to show off some surprising dialogue, since Parker hates too much talk and this hampers the otherwise clever dialogue writer Stark/Westlake. We also get a key incident seen from the different perspective of Menlo.
When asked about who he would cast as Parker, Westlake stated: "Usually I don’t put an actor’s face to the character, though with Parker, in the early days, I did think he probably looked something like Jack Palance. That may be partly because you knew Palance wasn’t faking it, and Parker wasn’t faking it either. Never once have I caught him winking at the reader.” I had kind of thought he was the image of Lee Marvin, though Robert Duvall and Mel Gibson have also played him. He is amoral, hard, sentimental. I think this is a good tribute to Hammett and a pretty good yarn, the least good of the four I have read thus far, but still good! -
If you read the previous novel then you know that Parker's gun was stolen ,after the failed assassination, by none other than his lover Bret, in order to retrieve it he has to steel a valuable statue for her father from a diplomat, things get complicated because said diplomat has been skimming from his government so they have already sent their agents to deal with him... what stands out in this novel is Parker's out of character behavior : usually when a job sours he doesn't stick around , but when his partner is kidnapped he stays and comes to the rescue ...
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eh... my least favorite parker book yet. it's also the first 'freak of the week'; that is, one that has nothing to do parker's backstory -- kind of like a mediocre x-files that has nothing to do with the alien mythology and you feel like you might've wasted 44 minutes of your life but it's also okay because it's the x-files and even the clunky stupid bad ones are good (except for the few 'funny' episodes). but the mourner will get 3 stars simply because it's a parker book and all parker books are inherently good creations. and there are some good things in here... but it'd be just fine, dear parker reader, to skip over from the outfit to the score. (assuming, of course, that you are a parker reader and are reading 'em in chronological order... because you are reading all the parker novels, aren't you?)
and lemme use this space to briefly discuss a tiny aspect of that 'inherent goodness' i was yabbering on about: location, location, location. yeah, i've kinda become obsessed with the repetition* of similar locations in these parker books. parker, the ultimate lone wolf, lives in various resort hotels (when not on a job) and seedy shitbag motels (when on one) and stark's great at creating that just-right flavor for both of 'em. i'm partial to the shitbags with their fire escapes and their time/blood/semen stained carpets and those wonderfully crappy beds... and also those small towns parker ends up in when he ventures outta NYC or miami. those towns. i love those towns. towns surrounded by miles of scrubby flatlands, towns with two stoplights, towns of greasy spoons and fleabag motels and sheriffs with orval faubus-like folds of fat at the back of their necks. good good stuff.
alright, well. onto the next one.
next up: the jugger
*i'm kind of obsessed with repetition in general. i've been listening pretty hardcore over the past few weeks to my buzzcocks albums and i think pete shelley shares a similar obsession: that final sequence of songs on a different kind of tension (which, for my money, is a greater sequence than the final bit of abbey road), that wonderful repetition of hollow inside, a different kind of tension, i believe, does something very weird and very satisfying to my brain. -
*3.5 Stars*
There aren't loads of substance to these books so far and they're almost all plot, so I would feel weird giving them super high scores. But I really can't find much that's wrong with them. They've been very consistent so far and Richard Stark always shines with pacing, plotting, and action.
This time around, Parker has finally concluded his big F**k-you campaign against the Outfit and now he's ready to go back to doing his regular dirty deeds. But first he has to finish his business with his treacherous bed-buddy Bett Harrow, who stole his hot gun after a shootout in the last book and is blackmailing him to help her father steal a priceless 14th-century statuette thought lost for centuries. Parker's a bit pissed that his hand is being forced, but he needs the gun back, he's able to swindle a high pay day on the job as well, and the job seems simple enough. But, remember in Parker world, it's never that simple.
Although it's not remarkable and it feels like there's a little less at stake personally for Parker this time around, it's a solid installment in what is a good series that is fun, quick and easy-to-read, and entertaining. And that's all one can ask for! Recommended for anyone who likes hard-boiled crime with big fists and cool heists. -
Parker gets blackmailed by Bett Harrow, his "love" interest from previous book, The Outfit, to steal a statue called the Mourner for her father. Parker and Handy run afoul of another group planning on robbing the same man. People are killed and Parker makes an alliance with Menlo, a Russian charged with getting back $100,000 the man was skimming off the top. Only things don't go as planned...
As usual, Parker (and Richard Stark, for that matter) delivers the goods. As in all Parker tales, the beauty lies in the planning of the caper and the inevitable double cross. Menlo made a good foil for Parker since he and Parker are almost complete opposites.
The Parker books never disappoint and I highly recommend them to crime fiction fans. Even though you know Parker will survive to appear in subsequent books, it's still one hell of a ride. -
"The Mourner" is the fourth in the 24-strong Parker series. Parker is Donald Westlake's creation although he published it under the pseudonym, Richard Stark. Briefly, Parker is a thief, a burglary, a
robber, a heister. Parker works with a few other thieves and is often at odds with the Outfit or the Syndicate. He is a tough-nosed, unyielding individual. These Parker stories are solid action from cover to cover and are all highly recommended.
This book is Westlake's nod to the Maltese Falcon in too many ways to be ignored. One of the things he is tasked with stealing is a fourteenth-century statute, the Mourner, and there are many parties
after it, including an ex-spy from a small Communist nation somewhere near the Carpathian mountains. Ex-spy, August Menlo, is often described as a fat man, just like Gutman in the Maltese Falcon. Westlake does a great job of developing Menlo, who is just the most unusual character as he misunderstands a Southern small-town speed trap and reacts very badly to the stop, perhaps because he has $100,000 of stolen money in his car.
Another character fairly well-developed is the voluptuous Bett Harrow, who is holding onto a gun Parker had used in a killing and, with her father, wants Parker to steal the statue. Bett is always lounging around in a hotel room and has moves like a burlesque dancer. Parker isn't interested in her because, when he is on a job, he is celibate and focused on only one thing. When the job is done, well, that's something else entirely. Bett is your no-holds-barred femme fatale and she is willing to go off with whoever appears to be the strongest.
In this novel, Parker is attacked, knifed, shot, and left for dead. Well, that doesn't distinguish it from other Parker novels, but he is quite roughed up here. With the thievery, the constant battles with the Outfit guys, the spy vs. spy capers involving the statute and other things, and the machinations involving Bett's constantly shifting loyalties, it is a solid, action-packed Parker outing. -
Another in the Parker series of books about our "not so nice guy" Parker. This opened up with me wondering what had gotten into Parker as he was on a sort of rescue mission. BUT I was later relieved to find that his motives were purely selfish and he was worried about the swag rather than the guy.
Yeah, Parker's that kind of guy. He has few scruples and even less compassion...but he's a good thief.
As i said another fast moving adventure with Parker (somewhat) blackmailed into a job (though he spots a pressure point he can use to get "an" upper hand.) Worth reading. I like these.
I can recommend it. -
Reading my review from 2010 below before I re-read ‘The Mourner’, I was struck by one of my observations – suggesting that Stark clearly liked Menlo so much he gave him a quarter of the novel. Now surely all Parker novels are structured in four acts, with the third one given over to things that are going on around Parker; and it’s not uncommon for the third section to be given over entirely to a completely different character, with the corresponding section of ‘The Hunter’ given over to Mel Resnik. Therefore, it can’t have been that much of a surprise to my younger self that part of this book is handed to Parker’s antagonist du jour. So what on Earth was I talking about? But then I read the book again and saw exactly what I meant. In Augustus Menlo we don’t have a normal run of the mill character for Parker to overcome, we have one whom Richard Stark clearly loves and adores.
When the book focuses on Manlo, it doesn’t just look at the now and his motivations of the instant, it gives us his life story. What we have here is a beautiful mini-novel, of a straight-laced European policeman, who is comfortably if boredly married and content to live out his life following rules – until that is temptation is thrown in his way and he cracks triumphantly. There really is enough material here for Manlo to have a book just to himself. He’s a wonderful character – huge, exotic, European, a charmer, a beautiful talker with a smooth façade that hides a passionate yet corrupt heart. In short he’s the greatest character Sydney Greenstreet never played.
The fact that Manlo arrives and totally dominates even his chapters with Parker makes for an odd juxtaposition. He’s such a big character, such a stagey character that he doesn’t quite fit in to Parker’s world and Parker doesn’t fit into his. And yet Stark does make it work – you have these characters who ostensibly speak different languages, one who is American hard man taciturn which the other is poetically loquacious, who are steeped in different political philosophies (a kind of capitalism versus a kind of communism), Yet deep down they recognise in each other the same strain of dishonestly which means they know each other but can’t possibly trust each other.
If memory serves this is the last book for some time where the repercussions of a previous book are played out – with the story kicked into life by the theft of Parker’s gun in ‘The Outfit’ (which was itself brutally grabbing at loose ends from ‘The Hunter’). Parker is pressured into stealing a medieval statue from the home of a diplomat, but things very rapidly go wrong when other interested parties show their heads. It doesn’t work seamlessly, but Stark here does have two fantastic characters in Parker and Manlo and the results are compulsive.
Review from January 2010
Interestingly the last Dortmunder novel I read ('Don't Ask') featured representatives of an Eastern European government behaving in a duplicitous fashion. As does this Parker novel. The two books were published thirty years apart, but there was clearly something in the idea that Westlake/Stark enjoyed.
Perhaps it’s that in Augustus Manlo – the loquacious torturer and hatchet man in the midst of surrendering to avarice – Stark created a character much richer than the normal hapless type who attempts to betray Parker. He is almost a twentieth century Dickensian grotesque, and Stark likes him so much he gives him an entire quarter of the book.
When Parker and Handy McKay are persuaded to steal a statue, things soon go hay-wire with the crosses and double-crosses piling on top of each other. Published in 1963, this is a fresh and entertaining read which contains little that would date it (apart from one reference to the Second World War which would put Parker in his dotage for the later novels). Indeed, with only a few changes this would still work today, and if I was an enterprising film producer looking to put Parker back on the big screen this is certainly one I’d consider.
(Also, it has one of the great Parker opening lines: “When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.”) -
Out of all the Parker books I've read so far (at this point the first four and then two later ones written after Richard Stark resurfaced in Donald Westlake's life in the 1990's) this is the most brutal one. There is something in the book that feels like it's a throwaway, in the overall Parker story this is mostly likely just a side episode (see brian's review for a good X-Files analogy for this book, although I tend to disagree on his assessment of the X-Files, I enjoy the stand alone episodes better than the mythology ones) but there is a small bit of loose ends that are wrapped up here. Parker seems to feel this story is a throwaway too, he doesn't seem that interested in doing the job he's doing, he's even more irritable than normal and his patience, which is never that high in the best situations, is strained by just about every other character and situation that doesn't involve getting ready for or doing the job at hand. His patience really comes undone when he has to get information from a woman about where a certain meet is going to happen. After already bashing her head repeatedly into a door frame to gain access to her apartment, he proceeds to tie her up, tells her to write down the address of the meet on a piece of paper when she's ready and then proceeds to pick up some kitchen matches. End chapter. Later we learn that the man who Parker is after in the scene returns to the apartment and she is in such a condition that the only humane thing he can think of is to put her out of her misery. The reader is never shown what Parker does, but my imagination filled in some pretty grisly details about what he would have had to do with some kitchen matches to leave her in a condition that it would be better to shoot her than for her to go on living in the condition he left her in. Some goodreaders here could yell misogyny and demand this book be banned but Parker's an equal opportunity asshole and he did just torture some Outfit dude right before heading over to the woman's apartment.
One problem I had with the novel (no I had no problem with torture in the novel, not that I condone torture, but I wouldn't condone a lot of what Parker does) was a pretty big unexplained hole in the novel. How exactly Menlo is found out by the heavies from his country is never really explained, and feel like a convenient plot contrivance. A character later in the book asks Parker about how this happened too and Parker's answer is something like, it's none of your business. This was just an irksome thing to me, but it wasn't really anything that took too much away from the story.
Next up The Score, which is one of the more famous of Stark's novels and hopefully will feel like a novel that the characters want to be a part of. -
When Parker was finally finished with The Outfit he ended up being blackmailed by a dame who had a troublesome piece of evidence against him, now he must steal The Mourner for her rich daddy.
Another slick, fast paced heist with a twist from Stark featuring Lee Marvin and Sydney Greenstreet, as usual with the series it starts off all guns blazing as you're dropped in to the middle of the action before pausing to catch your breath whilst Stark fills in the backstory. Parker is shot and left for dead, double crossed repeatedly and attacked by a duffel bag but by far the worst thing that he has to put up with is damned fool romantics who just can't help but yammer on about their plans and their past despite the fact that Parker wishes he could flip a few pages until they just shut the hell up and let him loose on another masterclass in efficient crime planning and execution. Man wants to get paid not hear your life story fool!
It's fun, it's well written, especially the short clipped sentences and the way Parker sees the world but it's also already formulaic and without a really great heist to get embroiled in the plot doesn't seem as interesting this time out. I hear in the next book he steals an entire town, I'm imagining him secretly moving houses on to the backs of trucks but I suspect that's not the case somehow. -
Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark knows how to write. Enjoy hard-boiled...you'll enjoy Stark/Westlake.
This is only my second Parker but oh, yes, no doubt, Parker's growing on me, warts and all.
The Mourner reminds me of the movie Pulp Fiction. Not the storyline at all but the likability of the bad guys, the characters, and the action of present events, to past events, back to present events. It's not difficult for me to keep up with at all, not even annoying. Takes a bit of getting used to though. But makes for a fun read, the back and forth.
Westlake was a prolific writer and rather gut the market with his two/three books a year, he decided to write under a number of different pen names. My, oh, my. What a concept! Patterson, Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele and a number of other authors could take a lesson from Westlake. -
Parker's post-score girlfriend Bett Harrow introduces him to her father, who wants Parker to steal a rare alabaster statuette from a foreign diplomat, except that when Parker and his thieving pal, Hardy, start to case the joint, the Outfit is already there in cahoots with someone else. When the Outfit figures out that it has competition, they turn on their employer, a shady foreign character himself. Parker saves him from the Outfit and they combine forces, each seeking a different prize. Then, things go badly awry, leaving Parker/Hardy in deep trouble. Better than the last one, 3.5 stars.
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This was a terrific entry into the very entertaining Parker series and among the best of those I've read to this point.
Don Westlake (aka Richard Stark) was phenomenally talented and the Parker character is just plain fun to follow.
Parker is all business and as unemotional as they come. He does what needs doing to secure his money-- if killing is required, so be it-- but he believes in economy of effort, so killing isn't his first choice. It's just the implacable nature by which he operates that makes the character stand out. Stark has a clever plot with nice, even pacing here.
He has written books with more plot twists than this one, otherwise I'd have rated it a 5. As it is, 4.5 stars for yet another winner in the Parker series. -
Another very good adventure with Parker. Not quite as high marks because a couple of things were a bit obvious. The books are a bit formulaic, still there were a couple of good twists & it was an enjoyable romp.
On to #5. -
Parker and the Statue
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (March, 2011) of the Pocket Books paperback (1963)
Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author
Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge.
The Mourner is the name of a rare statue that Parker is hired to steal. It is in the hands of a corrupt ambassador from a fictional Eastern Bloc country, but Parker's main adversary is an agent from that country's secret police who is looking to cash in for himself. This book diverges from the usual Parker narrative and follows the story of the agent Auguste Menlo for an extended time. Narrator Stephen R. Thorne does a good job in all voices in this audiobook edition.
I had never previously read the Stark/Parker novels but became curious when they came up in my recent reading of
The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Sept. 2020) by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager. Here is a (perhaps surprising) excerpt from their discussion with
Amor Towles:Nancy: Do you read Lee Child?
Amor: I know Lee. I had never read his books until I met him, but now I read them whenever they come out. I think some of the decisions he makes are ingenious.
Jeff: Have you read the Parker books by Donald Westlake [writing as Richard Stark]?
Amor: I think the Parker books are an extraordinary series.
Jeff: They feel like a big influence on Reacher, right down to the name. Both Reacher and Parker have a singular focus on the task in front of them.
Amor: But Parker is amoral. Reacher is just dangerous.
Jeff: Right. Reacher doesn't have a conventional morality, but he has his own morality. Parker will do anything he has to do to achieve his goal.
Amor: But to your point, Westlake's staccato style with its great twists at the end the end of the paragraphs, and his mesmerizing central character - these attributes are clearly shared by the Reacher books.
The 24 Parker books are almost all available for free on Audible Plus, except for #21 & #22 which aren't available at all.
Trivia and Links
There is a brief plot summary of The Mourner and of all the Parker books and adaptations at The Violent World of Parker
website.
Although the 2011 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition shares the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009
reprint, it does not include the introduction by author
John Banville. -
Thoroughly entertaining yarn from Stark, with Parker embroiled in the quest for a Mourner, one of a set of statues. The story moves back and forth in time, as Parker and Handy encounter old nemesis Bett along with a communist bloc agent.
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Another solid entry in the Parker series. Parker is offered a considerable sum to retrieve a valuable and rare statuette. From there, as is usual, everything goes awry with complications caused by a rogue cop from eastern Europe who has his own plans. Enjoyable.
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It was a difficult task to follow the last book, but Stark managed it. There was a string left on Parker from the last book & this follows it. What should be a relatively simple job gets complicated. Interesting, mostly greedy characters & enough action packed into what would be considered a short story today. Amazing! I'm going to stop my reread of these here, though. Too many other books & I'm out of my reading funk. Yay! Thank you!
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Somebody was reading too much Hammett back in 1963.
Ok, maybe not. It’s pretty tough to read too much Hammett (seeing how there was so little of it and all of it very good to great). It is not, I can certainly attest, all that hard to read too much Parker.
I have, indeed done that, as I have now knocked out the first four of the series in the last four days. (I feel like my tween self plowing through the Hardy Boys.)
In any case, I sense a real fatigue in this one. Stark relegates the great premise of these books to the background – instead of one-man Parker going up the too-civilized-for-its-own-good syndicate, he has to do a job for an ex-girlfriend who has an incriminating gun he needs to recover.
I can almost feel Stark (Westlake) searching for a plot and then thinking, aha!, as he imagines rewriting The Maltese Falcon.
The result is something that’s the equivalent of a garage-band cover of an earlier hit. We get a “fat man.” We get a middle-European fellow with an accent and a surprising resiliency. We get a stolen medieval statuette that no one – excepting one footnote-loving scholar – recognizes as valuable. And we get a femme fatale who’s convinced she can manipulate our detective hero.
I sort of enjoyed this, mostly because – like all Parker novels it seems – it flies past. They really go down quickly, and there’s a lot to be said for that.
It’s also fun to see Stark playing with the tropes from The Maltese Falcon. There is a modest cleverness to it that does not immediately fit next to the tough-guy stuff of Parker in general.
As I reach the end of it, though, I find I do not especially want to reach for the next one. It’s a little like having eaten too many Oreo’s.
In other words, I’ve had too much Parker. (For now at least.) -
The fourth "Parker" novel, and just not as good as the first three. Both the plot and main character are starting to get a bit repetitive, and for someone as savvy as Parker, he allows himself here to get fooled way too easy. Also, there's what seemed to be a plot hole, because (and probable spoiler here) at one point, someone doesn't take the time to make sure somebody else is really dead, but then later he's driving the not-dead-guy's car, which means he at least had to get the keys off the not-body, right? So would probably have noticed the not-deadness.
Also, and this is probably just a personal thing - I hate made-up countries. If your story needs an Eastern European country, don't give me "Klastrava" - if you can't make it work with Moldova or Romania, then fix your plot!
Anyway, probably enough Parker for a while... -
Notes:
Series is Currently on Audible Plus -
It wasn’t as good as the first three books, but it was still good. My mind wandered at times.
KGB guy Menlo comes to the US to kill Kapor, a Russian diplomat who stole from the KGB. A woman blackmails Parker into stealing a statue from Kapor. Parker and Menlo end up working together.
I was surprised at what Parker did after he was shot. Those kind of surprises are why I like this author.
The narrator Stephen R. Thorne was good, but I wish he had a rougher, darker or more menacing voice for Parker. His Parker voice was too clean cut and normal sounding.
THE SERIES:
This is book 4 in the 24 book series. These stories are about bad guys. They rob. They kill. They’re smart. Most don’t go to jail. Parker is the main bad guy, a brilliant strategist. He partners with different guys for different jobs in each book.
If you are new to the series, I suggest reading the first three and then choose among the rest. A few should be read in order since characters continue in a sequel fashion. Those are listed below (with my star ratings). The rest can be read as stand alones.
The first three books in order:
4 stars. The Hunter (Point Blank movie with Lee Marvin 1967) (Payback movie with Mel Gibson)
3 ½ stars. The Man with the Getaway Face (The Steel Hit)
4 stars. The Outfit.
Read these two in order:
5 stars. Slayground (Bk #14)
5 stars. Butcher’s Moon (Bk #16)
Read these four in order:
4 ½ stars. The Sour Lemon Score (Bk #12)
2 ½ stars. Firebreak (Bk #20)
(not read) Nobody Runs Forever (Bk #22)
2 ½ stars. Dirty Money (Bk #24)
Others that I gave 4 or more stars to:
The Jugger (Bk #6), The Seventh (Bk#7), The Handle (Bk #8), Deadly Edge (Bk#13), Flashfire (Bk#19)
DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Unabridged audiobook length: 4 hrs and 11 mins. Swearing language: Christ used once. Sexual content: three scenes referred to, no details. Setting: 1963 various east coast U.S. locations. Book copyright: 1963. Genre: noir crime fiction. -
I have been reading the novels chronologically and I enjoyed this 4th entry in the Parker series. This time we get some Russian spies thrown in with the usual gangsters from The Outfit (aka the Mafia). Instead of a typical situation of directly confronting The Outfit for his own personal gain, Parker is inadvertently drawn into a more complex situation involving Russian officials stealing money from their government along with an American collector trying to steal a previously stolen (many times) piece of priceless sculpture I loved the character of Mr. Menlo who could have been on loan from one of Ian Flemming's James Bond novels. I also liked Handy McKay and hope the diner thing works out. But this doesn't change the fact that while Parker and his associates are highly professional they are ruthless and amoral, although generally not vicious or bloodthirsty. Looking forward to reading Parker #5 - The Score.
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The conclusion of a four volume arc (this is the first book in the series not to end on a hook for the next tale), Westlake/Stark continues to flesh out his master thief and surround him with interesting accomplices and foils.
As to the whole series so far, these are the type of short, tight tales not really published anymore - or at least not anywhere I see books these days - under 200 pages, all action, no filler. -
"They had him write the address down, and then they tied him and left him in a closet. They never did remember to go back."
What can i say? Another excellent Parker installment. Carries on from The Man With the Get-away Face.
Recommended. -
As always, this one starts off from the first sentence by throwing us right into the action, as our non-hero confronts two inept thieves who’ve made the mistake of trying to break into his hotel room. He learns they’ve been paid to target him, but he’s unable to find out by whom. He leaves them for the cops, and then goes off in search of his partner Handy McKay, who he was supposed to meet with but who is uncharacteristically late.
The beginning is a bit confusing, there’s a lot going on and we’re just sorta thrown in with no explanation until the third chapter, and then everything becomes clear in flashback.
Here’s what’s going on: two months earlier, Parker had met up with Bette Harrow, the dame who stole his gun in the previous book and who no doubt intends to use it against him. He meets up with her and her father, Ralph Harrow, and they coerce Parker into stealing for Pops a rare statuette, one of a set of ancient “mourners”. They promise him his gun back, as well as 50K. Parker agrees, but it has more to do with the money than the gun. The mourner is in the well-guarded home of a foreign diplomat from a Communist country , a man called Kapor. Again, Parker employs McKay to help out; McKay has the plan to get in romantically with Kapor’s maid, Clara. And that brings us up to speed—someone else, a Communist operative named Menlo, also appears to also be after the mourner, with help from Clara.
Part Three of any Parker novel always features events from another character or character's perspective, and they’re always very fun. This one is especially good, following Menlo after he thinks he’s won the day, until a surprise end.
The thing to remember about Parker is he doesn’t give a shit about you. Maybe that’s why we like him, despite the horrible things he’s capable of doing. Emotions can’t touch him; he’s impervious. He’s an island, and maybe there’s a part of us that envies that. The closest you can come to being Parker’s friend is being someone he’s not too annoyed with to form a temporary partnership. Small talk irritates him, and if someone does something out of sentiment or feelings of friendship, he is completely baffled. This makes him a man without any nostalgic impulses, without feelings of regret, without sorrow. He’s content. “Meaning” in the universe is a question he wouldn’t even consider, because it’s meaningless that it’s meaningless. He’s not miserable. He’s not anything.
Something worth noting in THE MOURNER, and relevant considering the above paragraph—Parker goes out of his way to make sure McKay survives. There doesn’t seem to be any immediate gain in it for Parker, but he does it anyway, and knowing what he know about him, the idea that he’d do it out of friendship is ludicrous. Either he’s delirious from being wounded, or he’s thinking long term and knows he can use McKay’s skills again eventually—but of course, in the next novel, we learn that McKay retired after this job. Who knows. It’s never really explained. I suppose you could say it’s out of character for Parker, although in a later book, The Handle, he again goes out of his way to save the life of a partner. It’s up for debate.
Parker tidbit in this one: he’s been shot six times in his life. He got shot in 1944, by an MP, when he was trying to take a truckload of stolen tires through a roadblock. No doubt that’s what led to his BCD.
In my edition of this book, a reprint from University of Chicago Press, there’s a very good foreword by John Banville. It’s used in the next couple volumes as well.
Parker’s score: $50,000 + 49,940 – 24,970 = $74,970
