BREAKOUT - RICHARD STARK

I read this because I’ve been stuck in something of a rut or rather a log-jam of non-fiction reading. I checked out a book about Chief Seattle, and started a book I’ve owned for a while about the American South and I’ve been toggling between them and not making major progress because all of them are pretty interesting. But if you take to long to read something you lose a piece of the picture. Plus, it’s frustrating. So I saw this at the library and grabbed it because I could read it fast, it only took two days. I believe I’ve read 4 (now 5) of the Richard Stark Parker books, mostly because there was a supply of them in Madagascar, where it’s hard to get English books. If you don’t know Parker is the main character in a series of novel a guy name Donald Westlake wrote under the pseudonym Richard Stark.  Parker, and we don’t get any more of his name and it’s occasionally hinted at that even this is a cover, is a professional criminal. He mostly does stickups and robberies but he’ll also commit fraud or blackmail or murder. He’s a remarkably flat anti-hero. He never softens or gets close to anyone or takes down the corrupt cops or anything that would make him seem complicated. He’s hyper competent. His crimes always go awry, otherwise there’d be no books, but it’s always because an accomplice, who Parker doubts beforehand, is cowardly, greedy or incompetent. Strangest of all, he seems to only want this money so he can spend months living in beachside resorts of Florida, surrounded by prostitutes and drink but not striving for a ecstatic bacchanal, more of a lizardly calm, until he runs out of money and needs to resort to crime again. I can understand why people would find these tedious or boring, since he never changes or grows but all I can say is that the books read really excitedly and I find his flatness and harshness transfixing, like a desert. Most of these books were written in the 60’s and have a sort of evil Mad Man vibe, this one was written in 2002 and it’s the first one I’ve read from this 2nd, post-70’s, run. 

Actually, as a quick aside, it’s hard to tell when this book is suppose to be taking place, people have cell phones but at one point someone says, “use the phonebook. Everyone’s in the phonebook.” and someone else makes reference (I think?) to the 1985 M.O.V.E. bombing in Philly as happening a few years beforehand. Who knows?

Anyway, it’s mostly the same stuff, Parker is in prison which is interesting but really written no differently than the robberies he preforms. For part of the book Parker is teamed up with a Black criminal and people in the novel keep pointing it out. I suppose the point is that Parker is too monomaniacal for racism. They then need to tunnel through building to rob a jewelry store, which is also ends up being pretty exciting. Either way, it reads fast and I think got me out of this reading rut. 4 guns.