| Title | : | The Seventh (Parker, #7) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 158 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1966 |
Just because no one had ever tried it before? What better place for a heist, if it was timed right, than a football stadium?
There'd have to be money in the box office; the game was a sellout. Every eye in the place would be glued to the action down on the field. Even the getaway would be a cinch. Who was going to challenge an ambulance, either going out or coming in?
An ambulance, with one of the seven at the wheel in a white uniform, and the swag neatly shrouded in the back. The only problem was changing cars, and Parker had that one figured, too.
So, they'd find an abandoned ambulance. Who was to know who'd been driving it? Because by that time Parker and the other six would be back at the hideaway divvying up the loot!
The Seventh (Parker, #7) Reviews
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Seven books into the series, the Parker books have no business being this good. The stories are so simple that one would expect them to be too formulaic and repetitive. But with plot supermaster Richard Stark at the helm, this is not the case. He's always so effortlessly creative when it comes to weaving a plot and he makes this book the best Parker novel so far in the series.
In this one, rather than detailing the setup of a complicated heist, we begin after the crime, as Parker holes up with the money and a woman he can bone until it's time to split the take. But when he goes out to get some beer and comes back to find her stabbed to death with a sword and the money stolen, he sets out to track the thief down and make sure he gets his cut. One of the things that really makes this one standout (aside from having an even faster pace than the others) is the fact that some of the obstacles that push the story forward is caused by Parker's mistakes. Parker is usually shown as an efficient, emotionless man who's always right and is always the one with the best judgement. But he fucks up a couple times here and it's interesting seeing him dedicated to fixing the situation.
So far, Stark's Parker novels are pretty dependable and enjoyable and The Seventh is the best one so far. -
Dougherty said, "This one's a lulu."
Dougherty is a city detective and what he calls a lulu is a tangle of crime hovering around a robbery and a murder.
The robbery involves bandits stealing cash from a college football game with 72,000 fans in attendance (about $120,000 - football tickets were less expensive in 1963) and the person murdered is a sexy chic Parker was living with after the heist.
"This one's a lulu." Also a spot-on description of The Seventh, #7 in the Parker series by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark.
Parker served as leader of the pack when the bandits pulled the heist at that football stadium, one of the cleanest, smoothest jobs for Parker, ever. Afterwards things turned sour.
Afterwards is what The Seventh is all about. Here's the scoop: Seven heisters ace a stadium job in a fictionalized city the size of Albany or New Haven. Parker stashes all the loot for the time being. When the heat dies down, the crew plans to meet together, make the split and hit the road with their cut, each man getting a seventh.
But (a HUGE but), following three days of nonstop sex, Parker leaves the chic's apartment where he's staying to walk down the street for cigarettes and beer. When he returns, his chic is brutally murdered (skewered by a sword that was hanging on the wall), his two suitcases full of the gang's heist money are gone and, minutes later, two cops enter the apartment - obviously the murderer/thief called the police to frame him.
The above sounds the bell for round one. A few scenes later, all seven heisters gather to plan their next move to find the dirty creep and reclaim their dough. Meanwhile, the police are hunting for the murderer and those stadium crooks.
The Seventh might set the record for the most action loaded and packed into a 150-page hardboiled crime novel. Outlining the story's many details in a book review is well beyond my abilities as reviewer. I wouldn't even begin to try.
What I can do is splice together a batch of highlights to serve as something akin to a movie trailer. Here goes:
Cartoon Cops
Recall I mentioned how two cops enter the chic's apartment after Parker returns to find his girl murdered and the suitcases gone. Parker surveys the damage when "he turned and saw Mutt and Jeff standing in the doorway, wearing rumpled police uniforms. Mutt looked surprised, as though somebody had played a dirty trick on him, and Jeff looked frightened. They were both reaching for their pistols with a clumsy haste that would have made their old instructor at the Police Academy break down and cry." What do you think the odds are that within minutes Mutt and Jeff are KOed and sprawled on the floor while Parker heads off down the street? And to think, Mutt thought of himself as Humphrey Bogart!
Bottom of the Barrel Bozo
First step, Parker needs to find one of his crew, a blonde muscular hunk by the name of Dan Kifka. On the way to Kifka's apartment, a guy in a mackinaw follows him, a forty-year-old dud who talks like a kid in the schoolyard. Turns out, as he tells Parker, Kifka owes him thirty-seven dollars. Parker tells the clown to get lost, to stop following him. But some bozos just don't know when to call it quits. As Richard Stark tartly reports: Later than evening, Dan Kifka now owes thirty-seven dollars to the clown's estate.
Kifka and Janey
Parker discovers Kifka in bed with the flu. Parker also sees Kifka's girl nursing him back to health - tea, rest, and a little something warm and sensual in between. Janey is a blonde college cheerleader type wearing nothing but a gray sweatshirt with Bach on it. "She was having trouble keeping the sweatshirt on as much of her as she wanted. What with her breasts pushing outward and her hand pulling downwards, Back didn't look much like his old self at all." Curiously enough, by the end of the novel, Janey serves as an example of the depth of human love and compassion.
Sublime Steal
Right up front, in Part 1 of the novel, readers are given Parker's backstory as seasoned heister for nineteen years, always working as part of a team and never single-o. Readers are also given the four part heist structure of the stadium hit - 1) planning the heist, 2) assembling the crew, 3) the heist itself, 4) the escape - in quick synopsis. Everything went exactly as planned, the ideal, problem-free robbery.
A comic high point as the boys were in the early planning stage: one of the crew, a runt with a big mouth by the name of Negli makes a comment on Parker's new face (a run-in with a nationwide mob forced Parker to seek out a plastic surgeon to fix him up with a new face back in Parker #2). Negli says, "I wouldn't call it an improvement exactly." To which Parker tells him, "That's enough about the face." Negli thinks for a minute, then decides to switch the topic to business. Smart move, Negli. Parker isn't the kind of guy to make fun of, for sure.
Parker Has Brass
Parker judges a necessary key to finding that filthy, murdering, thieving scoundrel he's after is to get a list of names from detective Dougherty. The exchange between Parker and Dougherty counts as THE bizarre highlight of the tale. You gotta admire an outlaw who would pull such a stunt. As one of the crew tells him, "One thing I got to admit. I got to admit, Parker, you've got gall. You to go the cop to get your information."
Showdown
Hardly a spoiler: Parker squares off against the guy who ran off with all the cash. One of the most exciting endings to any of the Parker books, an ending featuring a climax where Parker laughs out loud. Now, what would make Parker laugh? To find out, you'll have to read this humdinger for yourself.
American author Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008 -
When Parker goes out for beer and smokes after being shacked up with a woman for a couple of days he’s only gone for ten minutes. But when he gets back, he finds her dead with a sword (Yes, a freaking sword.) rammed through her. Even worse, the money Parker was holding after the robbery of the ticket offices of a football game is gone, and the cops show up minutes later.
Parker was responsible for holding the cash for his six partners, and he’s not sure if one of them has double-crossed him, or if someone else has ripped them all off. But Parker really needed his share of that loot, and when someone shoots at him a couple of times he gets REALLY pissed off. Considering that Parker will kill anyone who gets in his way when he’s in his usual state of unemotional professionalism, getting him mad is a very bad idea.
This is one of the books that plays around with the Parker formula. The robbery itself went smoothly, but the aftermath forces Parker and his partners to play detective. Plus, Parker’s desperation for the money and anger at being ripped off turn him from the relentless but logical professional he usually is into the guy partly responsible for causing problems. As one of his partner’s points out, the whole mess is Parker’s fault for leaving the money unattended and his ideas for tracking it down are reckless considering the cops are still looking for all of them.
Getting to see a very angry and frustrated Parker made this one stand out, and the idea that Parker is the one who screws the pooch this time made for a nice change of pace. -
The Seventh was originally called The Split. Both titles refer to the same thing. Seven people pull off a heist, and they are supposed to each get a split, a seventh of the total take. Though it is also probably intentionally named this because this is Stark’s seventh Parker book, too.
This is the trailer for the movie version of The Split, (1968) with Jim Brown, Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, Donald Sutherland, Julie Harris, Jack Klugman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAiCm...
Yeah, this is what heist films looked like in 1968. What a cast, sure, but it’s pretty loosely based on the book, and Parker—played by former football great halfback Jim Brown—isn’t very much like the Parker I have been reading. The feel of it is wrong, I think. It’s a Hollywood film, and they have to make money back on that big bankrolled cast, so of course they focus 75% of the movie on something that is less than 25% of the book’s focus, a big dramatic theft of the receipts of a large stadium (80K capacity) football game. You can imagine how they play this up in a big cheesy movie, which was actually a kind of hit, as it turned out.
In the book, as I said, the actual heist, as dramatic as it sounds, goes really smoothly, so also is told pretty quickly. Though that's not the main point of the story. Afterwards, Parker gets together, as he usually does after a successful scheme, with a woman, until things die down and they can make the split. (And why does he like her? Parker talks as little as possible, so he likes it that she is also this way). Laying low, as they say, Parker basically stays in bed with her for three days, not talking; when he goes out for cigarettes for ten minutes, he comes back to this, as depicted on the pulpy late sixties cover:
https://thewestlakereview.files.wordp...
Yup, that’s a sword, and the killer also runs off with the whole take, and calls the cops to set up Parker, which puts the main action of the book in place, focused on seven people attempting to recover each of their splits. As one detective remarks of the crazy case, "what a lulu!" (yes, people used to actually talk like this at one time). But what ensues is also violent.
One thing Stark does in the seriest is interesting: Most of every Parker book is told from the perspective of Parker, but at some point Stark shifts so we can see things from another perspective. This is maybe not that unusual--switching points-of-view, wow, inventive!--but Stark usually adopts the pt. of view of some unusual character, or we wind the film back and you see the same events from a different character's perspective. In this book, Stark--so convincingly cool and controlled in every book at conveying the cool and controlled Parker--has us experience the perspective of the killer, who is neither cool nor cold. We get to see why he did what he did, we get to see how his mind works, and how he (badly) thinks through every bad mistake he has made. And it works.
I loved the very finish, which, as with the last book, The Score, made me laugh aloud. The moral of the story? Good things sometimes happen to those. . . who are sociopaths, whether they deserve it or not. -
Seven cities. Seven brides for seven brothers. Seven dwarfs. Seven sisters. Seven cities. Seven deadly sins. The Seventh. The seventh book of the 24 (or 28 if you count the Grofields) books in the Parker series. Seven shares of the loot Parker and six accomplices got by robbing a college football game. A seventh.
This book is a short 156 pages of excellent hardboiled crime fiction. It opens in a crazy scene with Parker returning from a ten-minute trip to the liquor store for beer and cigarettes only to return to Ellie’s apartment (some girl he was staying with) to find her still sitting naked and cross-legged on the bed, but now with a long sword through her chest and pinned to the wall behind her. All the loot that has not yet been divided into sevenths is gone. Within thirty seconds as he takes in the scene, the police arrive and, not only see the body, but see the closet filled with machine guns. In the few brief moments he was gone, someone killed the girl, took the loot, and set Parker up to take the fall with the cops and fall with his six partners who aren’t going to believe that Parker lost the loot just like that.
Thus begins a taut, nasty little thriller with Parker racing around time trying to find the killer and the loot while the killer plays sniper and takes potshots at Parker from nearby locations. The whole setup for the football game robbery is played out and it is a doozy. There are great scenes in this one as Parker works to convince his partners of his innocence and nearly succeeds. There are great scenes of where his partners have holed up. And, Parker trying to cooperate with the homicide detective, a mutual interest in finding the real killer, you know.
This book feels just like a movie as it unfolds and it would not be surprising if it was planned to be one. Usually by the seventh book most series start to go stale and peter out. Not this one. Westlake (Stark) is at his best here even when it gets a bit comical. Well, comical for a Parker novel. The only fault with this one is that it is such a quick read, leaving the reader wanting for more. -
this one starts just after the heist: parker's stashed the boodle in his closet until the heat cools down and then he'll distribute it evenly amongst his six partners. day three in hiding, parker heads out for coffee, and upon his return, discovers that someone has plunged a sword through his naked girlfriend's chest and the bed she was lying on (no biggie), and has taken all the loot (way biggie) -- parker's gotta figure out if it was one of his team or an outsider. and then catch the thieving bastard.
another thing i love about the parker series: b/c stark knows that parker will live to fight another day, he doesn't have to invest all he's got in one particular caper. now, that might sound assbackwards to some of you, might seem i'm saying that stark can kick back and make one episode less interesting than the next... but it actually makes for a better overall series. y'see, most of parker's 'jobs' proceed as we expect: a well made plan crumbles and our anti-hero's gotta improvise, pick up the pieces, and walk off with the macguffin. but, b/c stark's got so many tales to tell, there are some in which the plan doesn't work out and some which go off totally without a hitch. the latter's actually kind of jarring in that crime fiction has conditioned us to expect some kind of deviation from what was planned -- when it all just rides down that straight line we kick back and appreciate the confidence and bowling-ball sized testes richard stark displays. nice.
i wanted to rank this one higher than three stars: there's more originality and enjoyment in here than in most crime writers' entire bodies of work. but i rate stark by a higher standard: certain details and missed opportunities just drove me a bit batty... most specifically the large amount of magic bullets flying around the joint. yeah, yeah, the guy who fires most of 'em is an amateur, but c'mon: throw enough darts... y'know? if we stop believing in our protagonist's fallibility, we're sunk. we know parker's gotta live (shit, we're only on book #7 of #24), but the illusion of mortality's gotta be believable or the book becomes wallpaper.
next up: the outfit -
Parker and six other rob a football stadium for a pretty impressive haul, entrusting Parker with the take. Days later, Parker leaves his apartment to get beer and cigarettes and returns to find his girl murdered and the money missing. Can Parker get back the money before the cops get him?
Over the past seven books, I've found that the best stories are the ones that stray from the usual Parker formula. This one is no exception. Instead of pulling off a heist, Parker is primarily occupied with figuring out who took his money and killed his girl. Keeping his team together is somewhere after those two goals. While you knew Parker was going to get at least some of his money back, the mystery man angle spiced things up, especially when other members of Parker's team started dying and/or turning on him.
Another solid effort from Richard Stark and another great book for noir fans. -
One of the things I find enjoyable about the Parker novels, as opposed to some other pulp-like series novels I've read, is the way Stark mixes up the manner he tells the story. Yes, there is a predictability to the novels. The reader (contemporary reader, the reader reading this series when the books first came out might have had some doubts about the resolution, the flippant way that Stark allows characters to be killed off made it possibly possible that someone might think that any one of the new Parker novels could be the last one, and that Parker would finally not get out of whatever jam he found himself in) knows that Parker isn't going to die, that he's going to live to pull another heist, sleep some other woman, sit in a dark room staring at nothing my himself and get angry at people who waste his time. What separates the Parker novels from some other novels of the same genre is that they don't feel cookie-cutter. For example, they aren't like Richard Allen's sort of dull Skinhead novels where Skinhead starts off in jail, gets out, causes a ruckus and ends up back in jail. Nevermind the underlying morality of the Skinhead novels, which reinforces the Dragnet-esque Joe Friday / Christian morality stance that the bad always get their due, that justice is always meted out and that everything is ultimately good in the world (and the thrill in books like the Parker novels where immorality can and does go unpunished), what makes the Parker novels fun to continue reading is that you have a good idea that the novel is going to go from point A to point B but how exactly Stark is going to bring you to either of those points you don't already know in advance.
About this novel.
This is the second novel in a row where Parker's almost robot like infallibility when it comes to handling himself and the world around him is shattered. Because of the events in The Jugger Parker is left with comfortable life he had known completely destroyed and he comes into this novel needing to start fresh, all of his old support systems pulled out from under him. The way he handled himself in the previous novel could be looked as a series of bad decisions and now this novel's heist is needed to help him begin building up a new life for himself. By the end of The Seventh, I started to think that just about everything Parker did in this novel too was disastrous. It's interesting to see that his pragmatic / non-nonsense / sociopath manner of going about things isn't perfect and that a lot of the problems that come crashing down are the result of his own decisions.
I liked parts of this novel better than others, but as Brian pointed out in his review there is a silliness to how inept some of the characters are. There is too much suspension of disbelief needed to keep major parts of the plot going, and an almost comical amount of bubbling on the part of Parker's main antagonist. It is still a fun read though and an interesting continuation of the Parker story. -
When Parker signed on for a heist at a college football game - a chance to get himself back on his feet – the actual robbery went perfectly. It was the afterwards that was the problem. Three days later the money had gone, Parker’s latest squeeze was dead and there was someone taking pot-shots at Parker himself. There are some men who would run and hide at that turn of events. Parker, of course, isn’t one of them.
So another story where Parker plays detective, but this one actually shows the limits of the character in this form. Parker is just too blunt a force of nature to carefully wheedle out useful information from people, which is really what’s needed in a detective novel. Westlake to be fair does realise that limitation, sending Parker to actually front off against the lead police investigator and use a combination of implied threats and demands to get information out of him. But even though it showed Parker at his most quietly brutal, it didn’t really work for me. I didn’t believe that Parker would really think it was a good idea to waltz up to the policeman’s home, or that the policeman would give in so easy. I could appreciate that Westlake was trying to do something different, but it doesn’t quite come off – which is a shame as the book ends up pivoting around it.
Essentially ‘The Seventh’ boils down to a Parker versus crazy killer story, and whereas there should be a lot of mileage in that, the book is far too crammed with characters and doesn’t have enough focus to really make this conflict come alive. -
This seventh Parker novel is a beaut. One of the things I'm really enjoying as I reread all these Parker novels is the way that Stark (Donald Westlake) varies the formula from book to book. The style has the same forceful elegance. And Parker is the perfect mix of amorality and practicality. There are heists and complications from within the crew and antagonists from without. There's the four part structure, with the third part in the POV of the antagonist. These are the staples of a Parker novel. But StarkLake always mixes up the emphasis. Sometimes it's the heist planning, sometimes it's the heist itself, sometimes it's the aftermath, and sometimes it's all about complications with the crew or with the antagonists getting the upper hand. In The Seventh, which begins with Parker kicking in an apartment door, it starts right off with the antagonist having the upper hand along with the loot from the heist. The heist itself already in the rear view mirror from page 1. Although we do get a nice backstory recap in summary form later in the novel. (Starklake was so confident in this story that he felt he could skip a cool heist about a stadium robbery!) So the progression here is Parker trying to figure out and find who stole the loot Parker was safeguarding for the crew. First he has to determine if someone among the crew is freelancing. The Seventh is probably my favorite so far of the first seven books in the series. A bit shorter, a bit faster paced, and Parker is equally in danger and kicking ass. Has some really nice set-piece scenes.
-
Damn. Nothing packs a punch, or fills my need for a quick fix of hardboiled crime fiction like these Parker novels. Short, sweet and no frills. Though I do sometimes wish there was a bit more color to Parker's personality. He's the strong, silent type. Self contained and unsentimental.
This time Parker and his pals pull off a football stadium heist, on game day. But things quickly go sour. Very sour. But the even keeled, always professional and methodical Parker is one thief who won't stand for getting robbed himself and will never, ever leave any loose ends. He sets out like a bloodhound on the trail of the poor sap who threw a monkey wrench in his sweet operation, despite the dead bodies piling up around him. -
SO.
MUCH.
FUN!!!!!!!!!!! -
Parker is lying low, in his usual way with a woman, after a successful heist where his team of seven has stolen gate receipts from a non-conference college football game. When he goes out for cigarettes and beer after three days, he returns to find her skewered, and someone has grabbed the loot. Naturally, Parker thinks it's someone from the crew and starts his investigation, but the perp is someone else. Clever title, but I prefer the capers to the aftermath.
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Every aspiring writer, whether or not they like crime fiction, should read “Richard Stark” (Donald Westlake)’s Parker series. Not because the books are good, though they are. But because Westlake, like other great writers, has crisp, lean prose that lends itself to the telling of a story. Not a word is wasted. And no matter what kind of story you write, if you write it like this, you’ll never halt narrative momentum.
The story itself is fun enough but tough to recall with 250+ words. Parker novels aren’t really books you fall into. You jump in, enjoy the world, and before you get too settled, it’s over. Usually with a heist involved, since those are Parker’s métier.
This is only the second Parker book I’ve read and I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps even more so than The Outfit. A heist goes well but falters in the aftermath and Parker needs to find out why. The suspense builds and builds as the revelations come until the white knuckle conclusion. You likely surmise that Parker will be fine since there are dozens of these books. But it keeps moving to the bitter end.
The only real criticism I have of this is, you probably guessed it, the female characters. There are some not so nice things that happen to them, nor are they given much detail or agency. I know, I know, It was the times, etc. I don’t retroactively assign “woke points” to books of years past. But I do think it’s important to point these shortcomings out because they have historically reinforced misogyny and we can work to do better so future generations of women and femmes don’t have to deal with it.
Otherwise, this is a fun book and a great gateway to the series if you’re looking to dive in. -
Short and to the point. Like going to see a movie. Total entertainment. Tough guy stuff. What's not to like?
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Another "good" entry into the Parker bio-files, though "good" may not be the right word...as it were.
Parker is an interesting (there's that word I over use) character. I often wonder why I like these books and what that says about me. Parker is a thief. He's cold calculating and arguably a psychopath. That said he's good at what he does, maybe the best at what he does. He'll keep his word and do what he says, but don't cross him.
This book is a slight departure from most of the other Parker ventures into larceny and mayhem. We don't don't open with a planning session and the assembly of a crew. No here the "score" has already taken place and we join Parker just as everything...well let us say as the solid waste strikes the rotary impeller.
From there an excellent, fast and very bloody story takes off.
Enjoy...so to speak.
Recommended. -
4 ½ stars. Entertaining. Surprising things. I laughed several times. It starts slow but good later.
Authors: Here’s a great example of how to create a stupid (but smart) character who does wacko things. This guy really made the story. Had me laughing with surprise. I liked being in his head when he was thinking why he had to follow Parker. Because if he wasn’t always behind Parker, Parker might get behind him. He would have been smarter just to leave town, but he doesn’t - for weird reasons, and I bought it.
Cops are investigating the murder of a woman in Parker’s room and also the robbery that Parker was behind. The murderer stole the loot hidden in Parker’s room before it was divided. So now Parker and his buddies are investigating to get the money back.
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 7 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 Handle (Bk #8), Deadly Edge (Bk#13), Flashfire (Bk#19)
DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Unabridged audiobook length: 4 hrs and 26 mins. Swearing language: mild. Sexual content: none. Setting: 1966 U.S. city. Book copyright: 1966. Genre: noir crime fiction. -
Parker and the Stadium Heist
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (November, 2011) of the Pocket Books paperback (1966)
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 Seventh has Parker and a gang of six others performing a heist of the cash proceeds at a college football game. The gang is betrayed and the money stolen by an outsider and Parker works to recover the loot while trying to convince the others that he is not the betrayer.
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
The Seventh was adapted for screen and filmed as The Split (1968) dir. Gordon Flemyng starring former football player Jim Brown in the Parker role (renamed as McClain). A trailer for the film can be viewed on YouTube
here.
There is a brief plot summary of The Seventh 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 Foreword by author
Luc Sante. -
Also published as "The Split" and written in '66, this follows Parker in the after effects of a robbery of a college football game. Parker, along with the other sex crew members, is sitting out a few days in a town close to the target city.
Good action, lots of gun play and a couple of femme fatales. -
Parker my favorite rather anti social criminal is shacking up with some lady who dies rather harshly when the big fellow steps out for some beer and cigarettes two days after successfully finishing a rather well paying heist. This story is not so much about the heist but the aftermath when Parker finds his "girlfriend" very dead and the cash he kept in the apartment is gone. This book is about Parker finding out what happened with the money and the girl, especially in that order, and about the seven fellows with whom he did do the heist. Who took the money??
And excellent written thriller that easily qualifies as a detective story albeit that Parker skills of detection are not that great. The seventh refers to the share from the heist, even if there are initially only six suspects.
Great book, easily one of the best in the series so far, in my humble opinion.
A special mention is that the foreword in the Chicago edition after 6 installments of foreword by John Banville finally receives a new foreword by Luc Sante. -
The premise is great (as usual).
A robbery happened after a robbery, leaving Parker and his single-serving buddies penniless and angry, so Parker is looking for the double-crossing traitor who made out with the money and killed his woman. The setup is great too, typical cold, incisive, nobody-trusts-each-other underbelly where Parker is so great at outwitting everyone.
The problem with this book is that it kind of falls over itself in the last act, where Donald Westlake feels obligated to introduce every member of the crew and sort out the plot in less than 50 pages. So it becomes kind of a parody of a Parker novel in the last stretch: short, choppy chapters that display tough guy action without any enticing details. It felt generic and phoned-in.
Loved the ending, though. It's the definition of heartless. -
Another expectation demolishing crime novel. As the curtain is raised, Parker has just left his bed and a three-day-continuous post-heist debauch for a 10-minute trip for cigs and beer. He returns to find his woman stabbed to death and the loot from a holdup missing. A minute later two cops are knocking on the door.
All of this transpired in just a few pages of the first chapter. A succulent stadium robbery has curdled very quickly.
Loved the beginning of this book, it sags a bit in the middle, but the ending is brilliant. Parker may not always win completely, but things have a way of balancing out.
Highly recommended, although it might not satisfy newbies to the series. -
Notes:
Series Currently on Audible Plus
Richard Stark writes great vignettes. I enjoyed the pieces about the criminals more than the accidental bad guy or cops.
The ending was great. I laughed with Parker. -
Also titled "Seventh"
ebook with Hoopla audio
Parker screws up in this one; more reality. These 'Parker stories' aren't fantastic, but they are sell well written that the read is very enjoyable without author condescension. My source for these stories are paperbacks available from 'openlibrary/internetarchive' many thanks to the contributors. -
A book friend suggested I read this and I’m very glad he did!
This was a fun read and at times a bit of a wild ride. I will be checking out some of the other Parker novels. -
I must give a little preamble regarding my feelings about Parker. My ultimate favorite fictional characters have always operated on the outskirts of the law. For instance, in the medium of film; The Man With No Name, Batman, Jef Costello (Le Samourai), and Ethan Edwards round off my list of existential badasses. I have recently become fascinated with crime fiction and now incorporate Parker into my list and as the series unfolds he may even top the charts. I still have a long way to go until I reach Butcher's Moon which I know just enough about to realize that it may be the acme and the end of the "original" Parker series. The problem I face now is whether or not to ignore my graduate studies and other authors in order to plow through these books in order to reach what others refer to as Stark's masterpiece ... or savor each offering until the (sad) day finally arrives when the last entree of this fun-filled banquet is served. Damn I love these books.
The Seventh is Stark (Westlake) firing on all cylinders. Here we encounter all the hallmarks which make the books great; revenge, an elaborate and unique heist, unforeseen trouble, distracting ladies, and an ending so satisfying that it left me in wonderment of what else this series could possibly have in store. Another aspect about this entry is the assorted crew which Parker finds himself with. As I read these I of course want to experience what Parker does but at the same time his counterparts always provide interesting backgrounds and elements to the story. I equate it with Parker being some kickass rockstar that everyone paid to see and being joyfully surprised with his backup musicians at his performance. The Seventh has this quality as did The Score and parts of The Outfit.
Man this one was fun. -
In that neat style, "The Seventh" is not only No 7 in the Parker series, but also deals with 7 crooks sharing loot 7 ways and when someone outside the system screws up - how that seven becomes meaningless...well, till the end because nothing screws up for Parker on a permanent level.
And that is the beauty of the Parker series. It reads like oatmeal every morning and you are always happy after the meal. It is sort of the perfect airplane read but without the guilt - because these books are superb. To review them as separate titles is almost pointless, because really, they're the same novel. Parker is a man with little emotion but highly professional. He is part of a group stealing something (and that something has really no importance) and the fun of the novels is watching how the heist falls apart. In other words the heist or crime always fail on the grand picture, although Parker sometimes wins in the end.
So the novels are about how the failure happens, who screws up, who talks to the wrong person, and how they do their business. There are few surprises in the series which is why it is almost a trust-worthy no money back sure thing that you are getting your value out of these novels.
So yeah, its almost genius like in how Donald Westlake (Richard Stark) writes these perfect narrations on an on-going basis. But alas, he does and we the reader are thankful in a world that is falling apart - at the very least we can expect another Parker novel that will again say "things are alright in the heist world." -
The heist itself is an afterthought in the seventh Parker novel because all the problems come after the fact. After the robbery goes flawlessly, Parker is in charge of guarding the loot until time comes to divvy up with his partners, but when he steps out for ten minutes to buy beer and cigarettes, he steps back in to find the money gone. And his girl dead, too. What follows is typical Parker as problem solver--up until the point when Parker's judgment fails him and makes a colossally brazen and unnecessary gambit. But this one of the things that gives the ongoing cartoon of Parker's life the air of reality: Parker isn't perfect. Sometimes, in fact, he can be quite stupid.
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I love the momentum of these stories, the clean style, and the sheer relentlessness of the Parker character. Plus, there's something subtly strange about all of the books I've read thus far in the series. I always picture them taking place on cold, gray Fall days, with skeletal trees and steam rising from vents, and this bleakness creeps into my gut as I'm reading. All of a sudden I find myself thinking, "Man, these are some soulless motherfuckers, completely driven by fleshly desires," and then I think, "Well, isn't that all of us?" and then I need a drink. Westlake picked the perfect nom de plume for these books. Behold, the world stripped bare.
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A particularly nasty entry in the chronicles of the man with the brown clay hands, with a last sentence that's both thuddingly obvious and gleefully meta. The entire final set-piece is incredible, like something I'd imagine out of an 1980s Hong Kong cop movie, with the action literally rising as our 'hero' scales the floors of a multi-story construction site in the middle of a bulldozed field, each floor he ascends more sparse and unfinished than the one before, until at last there are only the essentials: Parker, the other schmuck, the money, a bullet, and the uncaring air.
