BREAKOUT - RICHARD STARK

AVAILABLE

ADDENDUM: Well, that’s strange. Turns out I’ve already read and reviewed this book. I suspected I’d read it before. This feeling was especially strong during the jewelry heist section. I initially thought I’d read this before in comic form, since, as mentioned, some of the classic Parker novels have been remade as moody comic books. But, I discovered there is no comic version of Breakout so I chalked up the deja vu to the underlying sameness of the Richard Stark books which I consider to be a strength of the series, I’m not knocking it. Well, I noticed that the novel makes a reference to the M.O.V.E. bombing, which is a subject I’m pretty fascinated with, and I remembered that the last Stark I read also had an oblique reference to this obscure event. I looked back on my reviews to see which Stark was the last one I’d read. Lo and behold, Breakout. So here you go, a second review, written before I realized the first one existed. You can see the exact moment at the end where I realized what’s going on. I’m not a smart man. 

Another one. I believe, based on Wikipedia, that there are 24 Parker novels by Donald Westlake. I believe I’ve read 7 of them. It’s a little hard to tell because in addition to these UChicago reprints (which is where I’m getting them now that the mystery bookstore is closed in Seattle) I’m also into the Darwyn Cooke series of comics adapted from novels. So sometimes I’ve read both the comic and the book, sometimes just one or the other, sometimes they merge together in my head and I forget which one I’ve read. For instance, I thought I’d read a comic version of this book, turns out no such book exists. 

It can be an easy mistake to make, the Parker novels certainly follow a similar script. Parker gets involved in a job, something seems off to him about it, the other people involved are less competent and less mechanical than he is, they’re greedy, etc. Inevitably, the job does go sour and Parker has to use his wits and ruthlessness to get himself out of there. This book puts a bit of a twist on this formula: there are 2 jobs in this one. First, the novel opens with Parker in jail (more on that in a second). The first third of the book concerns his titular breakout and it’s the typical Parker-is-smarter-and-more-patient-than-everyone-else storyline. There’s an interesting twist where Parker is able to avoid detection by teaming up with a Black inmate (or, to be precise, the inmates themselves become very suspicious while we later learn the authorities never even considered the possibility of YT and Black inmates teaming up) and the novel goes out of it’s way to point out how most/all other criminals (including the more minor Black ones) are, at minimum, prejudiced and unwilling to work across racial lines. However, since Parker is essentially a crime-shark, notions like this would only slow him down, so he has no use for them. There is a funny part at the beginning about how hard it is for a man to adjust to prison but then goes on to say that Parker was able to get into this dog-eat-dog mindset in a week. After they breakout (spoiler alert) Parker and the crew decides to rob a jewelry supply building to get some cash. Things get crazy, predictably, and Parker has to use his criminal know-how to straighten it all out. Comfortably the same as always. Also, as always, Parker’s lifestyle and outlook is the strangest and most compelling part. He never evolves or has a change of heart or even begins to feel bad about the stuff he does. He only wants to make money then live as a sort of powerful lizard, decadently at a Florida resort (tho, of course, even his decadence is tame, it’s basically living like a retired guy). This book has him going a little more out of his way for others but even this is explained, “Parker didn’t live by debts accumulated and paid off...Parker didn’t collect IOUs, either the good ones or the bad ones, but he knew he had to live among people with those sorts of tote boards in their mind.” Even his non-selfish actions, he justifies to himself as selfish ones. As an interesting aside, this book is one of the 8 Parker books he wrote after the hiatus. The Parker novels were mostly written in the 70s and seem to take place in the early 60s (tho it seems a purposefully vague) but 8 of them were written in the late 90s early 2000s (this one is from 2002). Bizarrely, Stark has aged the world but not Parker. Parker should be gereatric in this book but he presents as 30s-40s, just like in the original series. Stark should just have set these books back then since he doesn’t have a great sense regarding how technology has changed crime. For instance, the tension at the beginning of the book is that the cops at the prison will eventually figure out who Parker is,he’s in under a false name and on the run for killing a prison guard in California, by running his prints. Back in the 70s I will believe that this would take months. Today, it would happen during your arrest. Likewise, he puts the word cellphone in italics and refers to an office full of computers in the jeweler’s building as the “website room”. Somewhat adorable but unnecessary. Just set them in 1963. Finally, this book contains another reference to the M.O.V.E. bombing in Philly, just like