Flashfire

Rating:
Summary: Another great Parker book
Review: Every genre has its masters. In the caper novel, one of the masters, actually one of the grandmasters, is Donald Westlake. Whether writing Parker novels as Richard Stark or the Dortmunder books (Parker's comic opposite) under his own name, Westlake always delivers.

To those unfamiliar with Parker (most recently portrayed cinematically in the fun movie, Payback), he is a violent and generally amoral thief whose cold, almost mechanical approach to his job and life lead to his general success. Parker is not a nice guy, but he is compelling to read about.

The story this time is familiar enough; Parker gets ripped off and goes after the thieves who betrayed him. Along the way, he makes enemies and allies who complicate his plans. Revenge isn't the proper word for what Parker seeks, since that would imply a level of emotions that he doesn't have; instead, Parker seeks balance: those who defy his code must be punished to restore balance.

How important is this sense of balance to Parker? Along the way to his final confrontation, he winds up stealing far more than he originally lost, but it means little: he still wants the original money. He is actually more interested in people who steal from him than people who kill him.

If you like crime novels, you can't go wrong with Parker (or Westlake's books in general). Reading a Parker novel gets to the basics of what a caper book is all about: clever plotting and plenty of action.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully gritty and stark roman noir.
Review: Everything went according to plan. If the heist was a little flashier than Parker ordinarily liked, it still got the job done. The problems began when it came time to settle up. Rather than pay him his full share, Parker's three co-conspirators informed him that they were "borrowing" his take. They needed it as seed money for a big job in Palm Beach, so they left him high and dry. That was their first mistake. Their biggest mistake, though, was leaving him alive.

Richard Stark's intriguingly misanthropic master thief is back for yet another hard boiled adventure and it's a very good one. Bouncing back from the disappointing "Backflash," this time out the author has his noir chops finely honed. He keeps the prose appropriately stark and close to the bone. That's just what Parker's stories require. He is not a man who lives in a world of many colors or flavors and this book reflects that in its writing.

The plot is swift and uncomplicated, allowing us to appreciate Parker's brilliant criminal instincts and disdain for conventional morality. It takes a good writer to make a person who's not very likable into a convincing protagonist and Stark does a top notch job of it. It doesn't hurt that most of the people Parker meets, criminal or not, are just as crooked as he is.

"Flashfire" makes for an excellent, quick summer read.

Rating:
Summary: It's a crooks paradise.
Review: I have always loved Richard Stark's Parker novels. They are all tough, mean, fast paced, short, and easy to read. This one, "Flashfire", is up there. Parker is involved in one heist where he's ripped off, and then he goes to take revenge on his former partners. I think the robberies are brilliant, and have always wondered if they'd work in real life (though I wouln't bet my life on it). Parker is mean, cold, and precise, an expert. He certainly lacks defintion, but it isn't a flaw, for some reason. I liked this one, as well all the others. A must ofr anyone who like crime thrillers.