Breakout

Rating:
Summary: As Good As It Gets
Review: It goes without saying that a Richard Stark "Parker" story is read at one sitting. Fortunately for the reader (or the sittee, if you will), the books are rarely longer than 300 pages. It's manageable. The writing is as spare and smooth as fine leather holster and concise as a Hemingway vignette.

Parker gets nailed in a pharmaceutical robbery gone south. He is detained by the law in a fortress like detention center situated in the flatlands. This is desperate times for Parker who has escaped from a prison in the distant past and killed a guard in the process. He must escape and does in most ingenious manner. He is coerced (against his better judgment) into a jewelry heist that involves tunneling into an impregnable armory. It is all in the finely engineered details that enchant us. How they get in. More important, how they get out. It isn't Parker's lucky day. He has to get another confederate out of jail. Surprising to me, Parker and crew take some hostages. (I'm surprised because I think of Parker as a "take no prisoners" type.) By this time, Parker has been trapped so many times through no fault of his own, all he wants is to get back to Jersey in one piece. Will he make it? Of course he will.

People always wonder why they have this fondness for Parker, a cold-blooded outlaw with no remorse and no friends, only "associates." For me it's easy. I feel safe with Parker. Wherever he goes, he has to take me, the reader, and he will think for both of us. "Breakout" is fine vintage Parker and even goes a tad beyond his usual high standards.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: As Good As It Gets
Review: It goes without saying that a Richard Stark "Parker" story is read at one sitting. Fortunately for the reader (or the sittee, if you will), the books are rarely longer than 300 pages. It's manageable. The writing is as spare and smooth as fine leather holster and concise as a Hemingway vignette.

Parker gets nailed in a pharmaceutical robbery gone south. He is detained by the law in a fortress like detention center situated in the flatlands. This is desperate times for Parker who has escaped from a prison in the distant past and killed a guard in the process. He must escape and does in most ingenious manner. He is coerced (against his better judgment) into a jewelry heist that involves tunneling into an impregnable armory. It is all in the finely engineered details that enchant us. How they get in. More important, how they get out. It isn't Parker's lucky day. He has to get another confederate out of jail. Surprising to me, Parker and crew take some hostages. (I'm surprised because I think of Parker as a "take no prisoners" type.) By this time, Parker has been trapped so many times through no fault of his own, all he wants is to get back to Jersey in one piece. Will he make it? Of course he will.

People always wonder why they have this fondness for Parker, a cold-blooded outlaw with no remorse and no friends, only "associates." For me it's easy. I feel safe with Parker. Wherever he goes, he has to take me, the reader, and he will think for both of us. "Breakout" is fine vintage Parker and even goes a tad beyond his usual high standards.
-sweetmolly-Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: First stark work Ive read truly Captavating
Review: Look forward to reading all of Starks novels after reading this one The impressions and swift moving plots put you write there in the action Thank god for writers like Stark

Rating:
Summary: This quiet masterpiece is Richard Stark's best Parker novel
Review: One gets the feeling that there is a nondescript building somewhere in the West Village that contains three floors of guys chained to typewriters, banging out ideas that are eventually published under the names "Donald Westlake" or "Richard Stark." I mean, how else can you explain this guy? He is a perennial Grandmaster, publishing at least one book a year as Donald Westlake and one book a year under his dark nom de plume Richard Stark. He never repeats himself, never disappoints his readers and presents either new, innovative variations on established themes or new themes in a genre that, by rights, should have exhausted itself long ago. And so it is with BREAKOUT, Richard Stark's latest and best Parker novel.

Parker is a bad guy. He is the ultimate pragmatist, amoral, a shortest distance between two points kind of guy. Parker is always figuring The Angle. He makes mistakes but doesn't dwell on them. His life and chosen profession don't permit him to do so. Said chosen profession normally involves breaking into places that contain valuable things and taking those valuables with him. So it is that BREAKOUT deals almost entirely with Parker having to break OUT of places. First it's a jail, then it's a downtown mall, then it's a metropolitan airport. The familiar themes are here --- bad luck, unreliable partners --- but Stark, as always, puts new twists on them.

BREAKOUT begins with a heist gone awry that results in Parker being confined to Stoneveldt, a holding prison which has never experienced a successful escape. It is not telling a tale out of school to relate that Stoneveldt --- love that name --- does not hold Parker for long. There is a price, however. Parker becomes reluctantly involved in a jewel heist that seems to be foolproof. It's not of course and he soon finds himself trapped in a building from which escape seems impossible. And, from the beginning of BREAKOUT to its conclusion, Parker doesn't so much escape from a situation as leap from one frying pan into another.

Part of what makes BREAKOUT and the other novels in the Parker series so compelling is Parker's ability to play the cards he is dealt, even when they are accidentally dropped, face-up, on the table.

The story itself is so well told that it alone would be worth the price of admission. But with Stark there are layers on layers, little inside jokes, elements of his talent that he throws in as a reward to see if you're awake and paying attention --- extra credit, if you will. One of these is very minor and has to do with book titles. For the last five books or so, Stark has been linking titles. He's been using compound words, using the last half of the compound word of one title as the first half of the compound word for the title of the next book. Accordingly, COMEBACK begat BACKFLASH, BACKFLASH begat FLASHFIRE, FLASHFIRE begat FIREBREAK and FIREBREAK begat BREAKOUT. Next might be OUTRAGE or OUTCLASSED --- probably not. It will be something so good that you'll never think of it and so immediately obvious that you'll wonder why you didn't.

But the title game is just a parlor trick compared to what Stark does in the body of BREAKOUT. BREAKOUT is divided into four sections. Stark takes the section and relegates Parker to a secondary character in his own book, focusing instead on a minor character in each of the chapters in this section. Stark isn't fooling around here for grins and giggles --- every word of what happens is important --- but in the space of a little less than 80 pages he accomplishes what it took Thornton Wilder a full novel to do in THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY. And he does it without losing the narrative thread or dropping any of the other balls that one has in the air when writing a novel. I had the feeling that Stark did it this way as a means of exercising his creative muscles, as a way of challenging his abilities, the way an Olympian weightlifter will throw a couple of extra quarters on the bar when he already holds the gold. I had to stop and read Part Two of BREAKOUT over again, twice, just to get a feeling for how the job was done.

After writing 24 books in the series, Stark could have phoned in BREAKOUT and it is doubtful that anyone would have been the wiser. He instead continues to keep the series new and fresh while keeping it true to its original premise. BREAKOUT, at its core, is a quiet masterpiece from an author who seems incapable of writing anything but.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: A First Class Richard Stark / Parker Outing
Review: One of the other customer reviews made the point that the Stark / Parker and Westlake / Dortmunder books are in fact the same books. I think that's a little over simplified, but I have to admit that there's more than a little truth in that suggestion. Toward the end of BREAKOUT, I thought, "Good grief, this is THE HOT ROCK!" That's also over simplified, but you get the idea.

In THE HUNTER, Stark mentioned in passing that Parker was once arrested as a vagrant, and escaped from a work farm by killing a guard. This is the record, as Ronald Kasper, but with Parker's own prints, that dogs him, although it's by no means his last killing, on or off record.

This time out, Parker participates in a pharmaceutical heist that goes wrong. Unlike so many other times, he isn't allowed to disappear into the woods or down a convenient, unwatched alley. He goes, not strictly to jail, but to a "detention center", where suspected felons wait before and during trail. This is essentially the same kind of less-structured environment that Dortmunder wrestles with in THE HOT ROCK.

Parker is visited by a court-appointed lawyer, and manages to get a message to his long-time squeeze, Claire. Presto, a more clued-in attorney shows up, and things begin to roll. Ed Mackey, previously involved in Parker escapades, drops in to show his gratitude for past favors, and assists Parker in identifying fellow prisoners who might be useful in an escape.

They escape, and then Parker becomes involved with outsiders who assisted in the escape, who have a jewelry heist to pull. The heist goes down, and goes bad; Parker survives with his two fellow escapees, but must then break out of the converted armory that the jewels were stored in.

Are you getting the picture? This would be pretty ordinary stuff, but for Mr. Stark's masterful handling, plus a certain sense of humor. Told by one of his fellow cons that prison isn't a natural environment, Parker says, "It isn't an environment ... It's a body cast."

OK, the good lawyer is rather fortuitous (makes you wonder what happened to guys like Amos Klee), but the cops have been steadily getting less dumb, if still sparse. BREAKOUT's Inspector Turley reminds me a lot of the careful, smart cop from THE SEVENTH.

Bottom line: if you enjoy taking a ride with Stark, this one will be a pleasant trip.

Rating:
Summary: tremendous antihero crime thriller
Review: Thanks to incompetent partners failing to do the assigned jobs during a pharmaceutical heist, master thief Parker using the name Kasper lands in the Stoneveldt Detention Center, a maximum-security holding jail in a Midwest state. Not noted for wanting to be a guest of any state, Parker selects two colleagues Tom Marcantoni and Brandon Williams to bust out of jail. The trio successfully escapes their incarceration.

However, before Parker can return to the haven of New Jersey, he reluctantly agrees to rob a wholesale jewelry company that keeps its inventory in an armory. Parker and his partners easily gain entrance to the supposedly impenetrable artifice, but leaving proves disastrous as their entrance-exit tunnel collapses. Through a pizza delivery, Parker escapes, but now prison officials and the police seek to capture the elusive thief while other demands on his time do not allow him to do what he most wants: relax in the Garden State.

In the usual amusing yet stark story line, Richard Stark provides a tremendous antihero crime thriller. Parker is as always a delightful criminal and his partners bring out the best or perhaps the worst in him. All this action leads to the star going home with such a small bounty that his girlfriend wonders whether it was worth the score. Another win for readers as this one evening sitting is a triumphant tale that shows how a talented author can use the English language sparingly to paint a masterpiece summed in one word Parker.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Taut Plot, Quick Read
Review: The latest Parker book by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) is a series of breakouts and breakins. A bumbled robbery lands Parker in custody, but not for long. Parker assembles a small crew of fellow inmates to break out of a holding facility while awaiting arraignment. They successfully breakout, but then the real trouble begins when an attempted breakin of an former armory housing a wholesale jewelry operation goes astray and they are trapped once again in a "prison" of their own making.

Parker is his usual tough and quiet self, not hesitant to kill, but still someone the reader roots for to pull off another heist, and make he getaway. Stark's writing is very straight forward, with minimal words wasted on secondary characters who are used to drive the plot.

Rating:
Summary: Taut Plot, Quick Read
Review: The latest Parker book by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) is a series of breakouts and breakins. A bumbled robbery lands Parker in custody, but not for long. Parker assembles a small crew of fellow inmates to break out of a holding facility while awaiting arraignment. They successfully breakout, but then the real trouble begins when an attempted breakin of an former armory housing a wholesale jewelry operation goes astray and they are trapped once again in a "prison" of their own making.

Parker is his usual tough and quiet self, not hesitant to kill, but still someone the reader roots for to pull off another heist, and make he getaway. Stark's writing is very straight forward, with minimal words wasted on secondary characters who are used to drive the plot.

Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get better...
Review: This is certainly one of the strongest entries in this fantastic series. Westlake/Stark is at the top of his form here. One of his most satisfying novels since Drowned Hopes.

Rating:
Summary: In the hands of a consumate pro
Review: Through many twists and turns of a long and enviable career, Donald E. Westlake has always returned to two ongoing characters. Both are professional criminals, Dortmunder and Parker. As Westlake, his Dortmunder books are always hilarious. As Richard Stark, his Parker tales are always grim and filled with (cliche alert!) nail-biting suspense. What is amazing is that THEY ARE THE SAME BOOKS!!! Each tells of a crime caper that (usually) goes horribly wrong, leading to another caper necessary to straighten out the first, which leads to still another caper to straighten out what goes wrong with the second, etc.
One would think that this formula would get stale... fast. But it never does, because Westlake/Stark is such a pro that each book meets, and usually exceeds, the pleasure of the previous one.
So, too, with "Breakout". It never puts a foot wrong. It never delivers less than top of the line suspense. If you're a Westlake/Stark fan, you already know what I mean. If you haven't discovered him/them, what the heck are you waiting for?