The Outfit

RICHARD STARK NOVELS James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. © December 28, 2009 * * * Call me an intellectual snob, but I wasn?t aware of the Richard Stark novels until I saw an advertisement for them from the University of Chicago Press in The New York Review of Books, a journal of essays on books to which I have subscribed to for many years. A writer myself, over the years since a boy, I have gone through the American and European classic novels, and then increasingly on to novels of the more superfluous and contemporary class of what I call escape reading, which includes a good number of mystery novels. Joyce Carol Oates is right. Once you read a typical mystery novel, a few days later you can?t remember the story much less the plot line. In my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, I was a chemistry major but was opened to a whole new world when taking two required core courses for a degree. They were ?Modern Literature? and ?Greeks and the Bible.? Being an Irish Roman Catholic boy, I was familiar with the writings of St. Paul through the gospels, but I had never read the Bible, or, indeed, the Greek classics. The epistles of the gospels provided moral lessons, which the texts of the Letters of St. Paul provided grounding. I found Protestants were much more familiar with the Bible than I was, and so this was a further revelation of my ignorance, while my Jewish friends in college could quote the Old Testament as if it were a family heirloom, which it was to them. Before such exposure, I felt all the answers were in science and mathematics and I didn?t have to bother my mind about literature, sentence structure, or any of those light weight subjects that went nowhere and ordinary people filled their minds with. Because of exposure to these two core courses, I was moved to squirrel in electives far from my major in such courses as ?Shakespeare,? ?The American Novel,? and ?Understanding Fiction and Poetry.? Once I graduated, and now was a chemist in research & development, I returned to only reading science, that is, until I took a job as a chemical sales engineer in the chemical industry to make more money to support my family. It was then that I discovered the importance of those two core courses and the subsequent electives. They became the foundation to my understanding of people and how to deal with them. No surprise, I imagine, my first book was CONFIDENT SELLING (Prentice-Hall 1970). * * * Fast forward to the time of my first retirement in my mid-thirties, now with a passion to be a writer, yes, of novels and short stories, finding instead that I lacked the tools, the cadence, the sense and the connection such writers have with their readers. Curiously, now forty years later, I have written seven other nonfiction books, and only one novel, which was a memoir of my youth (IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE Authorhouse 2003). I am working on a novel of South Africa where I lived during the ti

parker on a quest to get revenge on the head of the outfit for having sent a hit man after him and hopes to rob the guy in the process! this plot line alone made this an excellent book but what makes this one stand out from the series so well is that it also details multiple other exciting robberies against the outfit carried out by parkers associates. from two guys ripping off an illegal casino and burning off in a car modified to go incredibly fast to somebody else holding up an underground bookies while dressed like Frankenstein and a few more in between this book has it all and then still returns to the story that brought you here in the first place and shows you what happens between parker and his greatest enemy!

The third novel in the Parker series has everyone's favorite professional robber facing off against the Outfit. After bloodying their nose in the first book, The Hunter (Payback/Point Blank), Parker is almost mordered by an Outfit hitman. This leads Parker to orchastrate a roberry spree against Outfit operations and thier head man, Bronson. The story is simple and to the point and we again see Parker's mode of operation in setting up his crime spree; from the mundane act of buying a stolen car and weapons, to the more explosive outburst of robbing an Outfit club and the final show down. As with the second novel, this one is a little more relaxed than the breakneck debut novel. parker is more in control of his actions and we can Richard Stark modelling Parker to better suit the episodic nature of the series, as opposed to the Hunter, which was written as a one off novel. As I have mentioned in the reviews of the previous books, the cover design for the current printing is just as dull as the previous two novels, ensuring a buyer will glance right past it on the bookstore shelf. The cover collage is cheap looking and fails to reflect the contents of the book, but readers who know what to look for will be treated to another classic Stark novel.

The Outfit "When the woman screamed, Parker awoke and rolled of the bed. He heard the plop of a silencer behind him as he rolled, and the bullet punched the pillow where his head had been." "He landed face down on the floor. His stubby , pregnant .32 was clipped to the springs under the bed like a huge black fly standing upside down, and Parker's hand was reaching out for it before he hit the floor" So begins the Outfit, the third of the Parker books. A series that to date includes: 1) The Hunter (Also published as, "Point Blank")(1963; AKA Point Blank, Payback; Parker, by Richard Stark). 2) The Man with the Getaway Face (Parker Novels)(1963; AKA The Steel Hit; Parker,(1963; 3) The Outfit, (1963 by Richard Stark) 4) The Mourner (1963; Parker, by Richard Stark) 5) The Score (1964; AKA Killtown; Parker, by Richard Stark) 6) The Jugger (1965; Parker, by Richard Stark) 7) The Seventh (1966; AKA The Split; Parker, by Richard Stark) 8) The Handle (1966; AKA Run Lethal; Parker, by Richard Stark) 9) The Rare Coin Score (1967; Parker, by Richard Stark) 10) The Green Eagle Score (1967; Parker, by Richard Stark) 11) The Black Ice Score (1968; Parker, by Richard Stark) 12) The Sour Lemon Score (1969; Parker, by Richard Stark) 13) Slayground (1971; Parker, by Richard Stark) 14) Deadly Edge (1971; Parker, by Richard Stark) 15) Plunder Squad (1972; Parker, by Richard Stark) 16) Butcher's Moon (1974; Parker, by Richard Stark) 17) Comeback (1997; 18) Backflash (1998; Parker) 19) Nobody Runs Forever (2004, Parker) 20) Dirty Money (2008, Parker) The castle was in Buffalo and the king was in the castle. The car was in the pine woods of Georgia and Parker was on the move: slowly plotting his attack on the head of the most powerful criminal outfit that had put a contract on his life. Armed with a new face and the old iron will, Parker is declaring coast-to-coast war. And after Parker's associates pull off twelve robberies in five days against Outfit targets, the man in the castle starts to get the picture. All except one part: with a hot car and a cold tenacity, Parker is coming after him... Highly recommended for Parker fans and fans of the writing of Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. Some of the dollar amounts might be somewhat dated, but the action is timeless. You really need to read the first two books to fully appreciate this one. Gunner March, 2008 P.S. I just orderred Dirty Money his newsest book. Maybe they'll reprint some of these old ones if they get enough demand, hope so.

The name is Parker and he's not one for making idle threats. When he talks, he follows through with brutal efficiency. And so, when he warned the organised crime boss not to cross him or he would hurt the organisation, it would have been a good idea to listen. What would not have been a good idea was to attempt to put a hit on Parker.When the hit fails, as of course it must, Parker sets in place a devious plan to hurt the Outfit just as he promised. What follows is a highly entertaining string of crimes around the country, striking blow after blow on behalf of our anti-hero, Parker.If you're simply after a flat out entertaining book of action sequences that aren't cluttered up with pesky character development, then this is the book for you. As a matter of fact, the entire Parker series is for you. Parker remains the true dispassionate enigma. Sure he's heartless, cruel and vindictive but you've just gotta love the rascal.