| Title | : | The Sour Lemon Score (Parker, #12) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 160 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1969 |
| Awards | : | Edgar Award Best Paperback Original (1970) |
The Sour Lemon Score (Parker, #12) Reviews
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Score gone sour.
Parker and three other outlaws - Weiss, Andrews, Uhl - pull off a bank robbery with perfect execution: preparation, at the bank itself, getaway all textbook. Of course, there's no academic textbook on how to rob a bank but if such a textbook existed, the author could use this heist as a case study - how to do it right without getting caught.
But then it happens: the boys reach their farmhouse hideout twenty miles from town and are about to sit down at the kitchen table to divvy up the loot when young, feisty George Uhl shoots Weiss in the head. Uhl then shoots Andrews. Uhl doesn't shoot Parker 'cause Parker dives through the window and runs behind the barn.
Parker would square off against George Uhl right then and there if he had a gun. But, as bad luck has it, when Parker crashed through the window and rolled on the ground, his pistol fell out of its holster. All Parker can do now is make a dash for the woods and leave George and the money for later.
Thus, The Sour Lemon Score is the tale of a manhunt, Parker hunting George Uhl across the Midwest and then up and down the East Coast, from New York City to Alexandria, Virginia. Special call-out for Parker's durable green Pontiac.
Many Westlake/Stark aficionados judge Sour Lemon as one of the top novels in the series - reasons include the variety of colorful and sometimes dangerous characters, examination of underlying psychology and motivation propelling men and women to do what they do, sharp sketches, especially in Part 3 where point-of-view rotates through six different players.
I myself became totally absorbed. Once I started listening to the 4-hour audio book while taking my evening walk, I simply couldn't stop. Oh, Donald E. Westlake! You propelled me into walking nonstop for hours. Enjoyed every minute.
As Parker makes the rounds, he comes in contact with an old lady selling guns under the table in her antique shop, the owner of a Greenwich Village record store who is openly gay, a jaded hipster babe on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a crook living the lifestyle of a typical suburban businessman, a heister with a sadistic streak, a beauty running her own dance/physical fitness studio and eventually (background music to build suspense) George Uhl.
Ah, George Uhl. I think we've all met this type of dude. In high school he might have been the class clown but he definitely was the cool slicker, the one who knew all the angles, the smooth-talking teenage con artist, they guy who claimed to get all the chicks and who could usually swindle and cheat his way into getting much of everything else he wanted. Hard word? No way, José! He knew he could use a certain kind of smarts to outflank the hardest workers, even if it meant skirting the law. Books and school? Are you kidding! What a waste of time.
So there he is, George Uhl, age 31, tall, thin, receding black hair, working his sixth heist. George is the driver for the bank robbery and George is being unusually jumpy - a real case of nerves. Meanwhile, Parker is in the back seat and wonders if George's nerves will sour the whole job, if George's jumpiness will cause George to race away in the car, leaving all three of them stranded when they run out of the bank. Parker is getting this weird negative vibe from George but Parker hasn't worked with Uhl before so lets it go.
Oh, Parker. If you only knew what was really causing George Uhl to sweat all over - George, you see, knows all along that this job is THE job, his big chance to score all the cash. Hey, unlike the past five jobs, there are only three other chumps with him on this one. All George has to do is POW! POW! POW! - shoot the other three suckers dead and all the dough, every single dollar, is his.
As it turned out, after he leaves the farmhouse with all the loot, George Uhl thinks maybe he should have shot Parker first. Nah. He did it right. It was only dumb luck that Parker managed to jump out of that window. But lady luck turned him a favor - Parker dropped his gun when he ran for the hills.
"But it wasn't all that bad. Parker and Uhl didn't know each other, so how could Parker make trouble for him later on even if he wanted to? And besides, since Uhl was going to leave him unarmed and on foot out here, he was more than likely to be picked up by the cops. Let Parker do twenty years in a federal pen somewhere and then come looking for Uhl."
There's no doubt you're a slick dude, George. But you just might find out the hard way what it means to underestimate Parker.
How hard? Read all about it in The Sour Lemon Score.
American author Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008 -
This one goes sour shortly after Parker and his associates knock over a small town bank. It follows the usual formula, and it's not the first or even second time Parker's been double crossed, but Stark/Westlake deftly infuses a palpable tension as Parker races against another brute who's trying to track down the same weasel, with an inevitable showdown between the two looming. The weasel of course learns his lesson the hard way, as weasels tend to; if you're going to double cross your partners in crime make sure to shoot Parker first. In many ways Parker is like the Spock of crime. No pacifist, he nonetheless remains ruthlessly practical and detached when it comes to business, doing anything required to live long and prosper :)
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"Always blabbin'. You know what your problem is, Parker? You talk too much"--Madge
Back to basics for Stark in volume #12 of the Parker series. Parker is not:
--taking on the mob, or trying to rip off a whole town, or take all the receipts from a football game, or taking on a small African country.
--softened too much by the presence of girlfriend Claire.
Parker is, on the other hand,
--in the short first third of the book, pulling off a simple bank heist, which goes flawlessly. When the four way split isn't as much as George Uhl hoped it would be, he knocks off two of his partners and takes off with the cash. When one of those partners is not Parker, well, we know this is a mistake.
--all about getting his split back and
--punishing Uhl for a dishonorable approach to the work
--returning to sweet Claire
though he leaves things, surprisingly, a bit open in the end.
This is one of the darker ones, bled of sentiment, which also means it is one of the best ones, with Parker as cold technician. -
At this point in the series, you gotta wonder how anybody in the criminal underworld that Parker inhabits could possibly think that it’s a good idea to try and rip him off. Stark (a/k/a Westlake) always did a terrific job of creating greedy characters and making you understand why they‘ve decided to take it all for themselves. But still, the word on Parker has to have made it around the thieves’ grapevine. It’d sound like this:
“Parker? He’s good. Great planner and never loses his head. He’s not a mad dog, but he’d kill his own mother if she was between him and the money. He’s got no sense of humor or social skills, but he’s the man you want pulling a job with you. As long as you do your part and don’t make any waves, Parker will always give you a square deal. But whatever you do, do NOT even think about trying to double cross that grim bastard. He will hunt you down to the ends of the earth if you try to take a dollar from him or if you’ve made trouble and you may be a loose end. Hell, he took on the entire Outfit once over a beef about money, and he won. You want to mess with a guy like that?”
Of course, just as there are always people willing to sign up for pyramid schemes and send money to Nigerian princes, there is always someone stupid enough to cross Parker. In this case, it’s a driver named George Uhl. Shortly after pulling a successful bank job, Parker and his crew are hiding out and getting ready to split the cash when Uhl makes a violent bid to keep all the loot. Parker escapes, but Uhl has the money. While trying to track down Uhl, Parker creates competition when he inadvertently puts another dangerous man on the trail of the cash.
I loved the first section with Uhl’s betrayal, and Parker scrambling to get away from the bad situation Uhl has left him in. However, at the end, Parker has acted very unlike his usual self and left a big loose end hanging. Stark often left something unresolved to carry over into another book, and that may be the situation here, but the way this one is set up is such an obvious mistake on Parker’s part that it took me out of the story. It’s still one of the better Parker novels. -
When the loot from a heist falls short of expectations, George Uhl kills two of the men and takes the money. Too bad he didn't finish the job and kill Parker too. Now Parker's on his tail and wants his money and George Uhl's hide. Too bad other people are after George and the money as well...
The Sour Lemon Score really washed away the lingering bad taste of The Black Ice Score. Parker does what he does best, solving problems. With no Claire to soften him, he's the relentless Parker of old. The plot itself is like a throwback to the earlier Parkers where you just waited for the inevitable double cross.
The heist of the title was only a minor part of the plot. Parker traipsing around the country trying to catch Uhl was the driving force of the story and kept the suspense going. Parker showed a little more compassion than we're used to near the end but it felt consistent with his character, as did the state he left his enemies in.
Another first rate Parker story by Richard Stark. If you liked the others, you'll like this one. -
I enjoy the capers most, and this one was not focused on the job, but on the betrayal. Parker is wary of George Uhl, the driver on the job. He'd never worked with him before and he seemed nervous and fidgety. When they get back to the safe house, Uhl decides it's every man for himself, but misses Parker. Bad mistake. With only the thinnest of leads, Parker goes searching for Uhl and finds himself competing for the loot. At the end, Parker does something completely out of character too.
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Originally published in 1969, this is one of the "Early Epoch" Parker novels written by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake). Like all of the others it's written close to the bone with no wasted words and no sentimentality whatsoever. In this case, Parker and three other men take down a bank just after an armored car has made a delivery to the bank. Parker knows two of the other men in the crew, but he's uneasy about the driver, George Uhl, who he doesn't know but who has been vouched for by one of the other members of the crew.
For once the job itself goes off without a hitch, and the robbers get away cleanly to their hideout, an old farmhouse where they plan to wait until the heat dies down. But the take is smaller than they had hoped and it turns out that Parker was right to be suspicious of Uhl. As they count the money, a disgruntled Uhl draws a gun and shoots two of the other members of the crew. His huge mistake, of course, is that he doesn't shoot Parker first.
Parker dives out a window and flees to safety in the nearby woods but loses his gun in the process. Thus he can only watch helplessly as Uhl takes off with the money leaving Parker stranded. Uhl compounds his first mistake by leaving Parker alive and the story consists of Parker's effort to hunt Uhl down and reclaim the money. Any fan of this series will understand that you definitely would not want to be George Uhl in this sitation. -
Maybe when I'm all done with the Parker novels I'll go back and award five-stars to some of them. This might be one of them.
In the Parker oeuvre this is the 12th novel and like a tonal scale this returns to the same note the scale started with in a different octave. In this case the scale was descending, and The Sour Lemon Score is a lower, darker and more ominous version of The Hunter.
The novel starts with Parker and three professional cronies doing a relatively easy job that goes sour when they return to their hideout and the driver of the job attempts to double-cross the other three. He successfully kills two of the men but, opps, he tried to kill Parker last. Big mistake in the Parker universe. The man gets away with the money but now has Parker looking to kill him and retrieve the money.
The general rule in a Parker novel is the same as in a successful revolution, you better make sure to kill all your enemies if you are going to be successful in over-turning the apple cart and upsetting the balance of power if you plan on living long enough to enjoy the rewards.
Parker and another group of criminals race each other to find the double-crosser, driving up and down the Northeast and leaving a wake of tortured, raped, and murdered people behind them. Parker's own sociopath side is mellowed out from some earlier books but that doesn't mean Stark isn't allowing other characters to do some very awful things.
Even though it is mining some of the same story elements as the first novel in the series, this isn't a rehash and shows again Stark's brilliance at being able to make the same basic formulaic story-lines feel fresh. -
I hate to sound blood-thirsty, but Parker should have killed three double-crossing, dishonorable, non-code following killers when he had the chance. I realize it isn't his job to keep the criminal world free of riff-raff, but people who try to kill Parker more than once should expect to die.
Great story though....my predictions and expectations are destroyed in every story. I did love the twist at the end..... the thought of the bitchy suburban lady left to mete out Parker's revenge on the men who terrorized her family is a bit Hollywood, but a pleasant note to go out on. -
Let me say, right up front, i ADORE the 'Parker' Series. Without doubt Parker is my favourite non-hero.
This is #12 of 16 in the original series. Stark/Westlake put Parker to rest for 20+ years, then resurrected the character for an additional 8 installments. I have now read all 24 Parker books & even though i didn't enjoy the last 4 as much, they were still better than many writers achieve in their entire careers. This series is the ONLY one I've read in it's entirety, by ANY author. It's that good.
I've read some reviews, where the reviewer has said the Parker character & the series itself, are two dimensional & to some extent, i agree. However, i see this as a positive. Too many authors give you exhaustive (& exhausting?) detail, ad infintim. Stark allows that you have an imagination & gives it room to move. More importantly, Stark weaves a story around his dark, amoral Parker and the action is relentless. Parker isn't evil, but he is the ultimate badass. He's a sociopath. That is, he feels no guilt, no remorse, would i think, rather not kill to achieve his aims, not because it bothers him, but because bodies attract too much attention from the law.
This story is a return to a darker, somewhat starker (no pun), Parker. In all these novels, there's a score; a bank, burglary, heist, whatever & invariably, something goes wrong. Someone gets greedy & tries to rip off the ripees or some other disaster befalls the crew. Parker always gets his revenge, but not always his money.
In this installment, Parker is double-crossed by one of his off-siders & nearly killed. Big mistake not to kill Parker outright. Parker sets off in pursuit. Oh yeah, he has to contend with an actual psychopath who joins in the pursuit of the ill-gotten loot. The ending is classic Parker, with a twist.
Stand out Parker novels for me were #1, 'The Hunter' & #14 'Slayground' & now this one also.
I am so glad i left this to read last. It was an absolute delight. -
One of the crazier tales in this cray-soaked series starring our favorite "papa don't take no mess" styled professional thief: Parker. He may take an L or two in this swiftly-moving tale...but do you really believe said L's won't be made right?!?
Bring the pain!!!!
4 Brightly Burning Stars. -
Parker returns. A robbery goes south and Parker goes west to find the man who mucked it all up. One of my favorites in the Parker series. Must read!
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Another day another Parker story and this time from the FPE, First Parker Epoch 1962-1974, and one of the shorter tales from the fist sixteen books.
In this book we see a bank robbery go well and as soon as the robbers come back in their hiding place and find out that the heist actually made less money than they estimated the driver George Uhl starts killing his fellow robbers. He makes one mistake and did not kill Parker first by the time he realises his mistake Parker has left the building and is out in the dark.
George is armed and Parker isn't so he gets away but underestimates the skills and determination of Parker who goes in pursuit and looking for Uhl and more importantly the money.
A very short and ergonomically written book that is about payback and Parker is a formidable person when he is after you. The book is well written and a true page turner and with it short length you are somewhat annoyed when you realise how quick the book has run its course.
Another tour de force by Stark aka Westlake. If by now you never felt the urge to try and read one of his books and I do advise one from the FPE you are lacking in your reading development. ;) -
A solid Parker novel of the aftermath variety: A heist goes so sour that it resembles a lemon, and Parker is hellbent on getting his money back. The narrative makes one serious misstep early on: In a ludicrous sequence, a fellow career criminal drugs Parker and injects him with truth serum so that he can interrogate Parker to determine how much of a threat he poses. I mean, seriously? The man has no reason on earth not to kill Parker, plain and simple. Starklake tries too hard with the truth serum, but he is otherwise in fine form.
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A finalist for the ‘70 Edgar for best paperback, Parker #12 was more fluid and easy to follow than some of Westlake’s (aka Stark) previous installments.
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It’s a quick listen and free 🤓 on Audible with a good narrator. I’ll enjoy continuing the series during my commute and/or while undertaking dishwashing duties for the fam. -
Parker never kills just for the sake of killing. And this entry shows Parker's idea of justice.
Great ending.
"No, I'm not leaving you to the cops. I'm leaving you to Saugherty's wife." -
Parker and the Greedy Heist Partner
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (March, 2012) of the Fawcett Gold Medal paperback (1969)
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 or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.
The Sour Lemon Score finds Parker on the run after being betrayed by one of the crew after a bank heist. Per the formula of the series, Parker regroups to seek revenge and to recover his money.
Narrator Stephen 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 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
The movie
City of Industry (1997) dir. John Irvin has a very similar plotline to The Sour Lemon Score but Richard Stark is not credited and instead the screenplay is by Ken Solarz. Harvey Keitel plays the role of the Parker equivalent character and a jewelry store is the focus of the movie heist rather than the bank heist of the book.
There is a brief plot summary of The Sour Lemon Score and of all the Parker books and adaptations at The Violent World of Parker
website.
Like many of the 2010-2013 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook editions which share the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009-2010
reprints, this audiobook DOES NOT include the Foreword by author
Dennis Lehane. -
The constant back and forth up and down the coast might have read better in a Dortmunder comedy, and overall this is the most brutal entry in the series so far, save for an oddly sentimental turn by our protagonist in the swamps of Jersey. Also with the amount of interstate driving (in a time before a completed interstate system) the times seem - even by modern standards - off. 4 hours from Alexandria, VA to NYC is barely possible today. I can't say it's unrealistic 50 years ago but it certainly feels like it is.
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The Sour Lemon Score is the 12th book in the Parker series by Donald Westlake, published under the name Richard Stark. It is among the best of the Parker books. Parker is a thief, a heister, a hijacker. He is known as being cold, professional, emotionless. He is the best at what he does. But Parker has his own notions of morality and they include standing by your word and dividing the loot equally. He is not sadistic or vicious. He only does what he needs to get the job done. Knowing all this about Parker (and he's fairly well known in his circles), you'd think most folks would be hip to what happens when you double-cross him. Well, George Uhl apparently didn't get the memo. Following a well executed bank robbery, Uhl turns on his three accomplices and makes off with all the dough. This opening sequence that sets the premise of the book is terrific. There is a whole novel just
packed in that opening sequence. The balance of the book is devoted to Parker catching up with Uhl,
chasing him from Bew York to Virginia to Pennsylvania. Along the way, other bad guys get wind of what Uhl is carting around and the race is on. Despite what Parker does in this story, he's not the bad guy here. He's almost an angel compared to some others in this book. The plot, the pacing, everything just works in this book as does Westlake's uncanny ability to create characters in just a sentence or two. -
Did you read the first book in the series? Or come to think of it did you see the Mel Gibson version of the first book (Payback) then you know that no matter how "BAD you may be you don't want to cross...or double-cross Parker.
The job is set, it goes off okay if not perfectly, but the take isn't what was expected...and one of the crew decides to kill everybody else and take the entire "pie". Unfortunately for him he didn't shoot Parker first.
Thus we get a chase across the country with Parker stalking the double-crosser while said double-crosser is stalking him.
Lots of action and intrigue here, good book as always. Recommended, enjoy. -
I could imagine this being Westlake’s response to complaints that Parker always wins. Of course, since Parker lives when few in these stories seldom do, Parker does win again. But not everything. In fact, if not for Deadly Edge, the next book in the progression, this could be considered the first small step in a series of losses that Parker would take. Not your typical Parker in content or structure but still enjoyable, still worth the read, just nothing great.
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I didn't bother reading the back cover and was surprised at how dark this was. The most violent one in the series so far.
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Parker is on an armored car heist, along with a couple guys he's worked with, and someone new. The new guy, George Uhl, is a wild card, and not in a good way. No honor among thieves is true, and so many things go wrong for our bad guy you almost feel sorry for him.
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4 ½ stars. I liked getting revenge, and I liked Parker’s detective mystery solving.
The bank robbery is a short section at the beginning. Then one of the group (George) kills the others and takes all the money. The problem is when he tried to kill Parker, he missed. So the rest of the book is watching Parker survive the double cross and then hunt George in various places across the country. I had no idea how Parker would be able to find someone who was on the run and in hiding, but he does. Good suspense, interesting writing, very enjoyable.
A mother and children are held hostage by someone other than Parker. It’s a small part of the story and did not end badly. But some readers might want to know.
There is a forward by Dennis Lehane (dated 2010) in the paperback. I was disappointed that the forward was missing from this audiobook.
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 12 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 5 mins. Swearing language: for the love of God used twice. Sexual content: twice referred to, one of them has two men together. Setting: around 1969 various U.S. locations. Book copyright: 1969. Genre: noir crime fiction. -
One of these days, I will start at the beginning and read through all the Parker novels from first to last, but until then I will continue to dip into the ones I haven’t perused. Actually ‘The Sour Lemon Score’ is not a bad episode to just dip into, in that it doesn’t require great knowledge of previous capers or comrades in arms introduced in other books. That said, the blurb does pronounce it as one of the darkest entries in the series, and so this might not actually be the best entrance point for a neophyte.
In many ways it’s business as usual: Parker plans caper, caper goes wrong, Parker kills whoever gets in the way of his desired aim. (Like Wodehouse, all the plots are basically the same when you break them down. I don’t mean that as a criticism – any comparison to Wodehouse, from me, is the acme of praise.) But in this one there is a surfeit of ruthless characters, and it’s sometimes hard to see why Parker actually warrants a higher level of empathy than them. Everybody else in the book is basically a victim, so it’s a lot of hard-men hurting those weaker than them again and again. And perhaps sexual politics is a problem in this book, with women either being shrewish, moaners or spinster-like – and having terrible things happen to them whatever. Clare – Parker’s better half – is very much in the background here, but reading this made me see why she’s maybe a presence in other books – it’s to prove that this might be a hard as hell man’s world, but not even Parker wants to be a bastard all of the time. -
After a bank robbery that goes off without a hitch, one of the string double-crosses Parker and the others and proceeds to kill them off. Except for Parker (of course!) who manages to escape and live to rob another day. He then goes on the hunt for George Uhl, that vile traitor.
Parker goes about finding his prey methodically and relentlessly. Oh, if only Parker had used his powers for good! He would've made a hell of a detective.
I won't be spoiling anything when I tell you Parker catches his prey, but it may surprise you to know that he lets him live, albeit with some broken bones. After everything Parker went through because of the double-cross, I was expecting him to be more, um... lethal. Who knows, in the remaining twelve Parker books, we may cross paths with George Uhl again. -
3.5 & as good as the last, but I gave that 4 stars, so I'm trying to even out. It was another fun, screwed up Parker adventure. Nothing else to say without spoilers, though. Sorry.
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My favorite by Richard Stark so far.
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Twelve books into the series, and I have just read the perfect Parker novel.
