Sunday, January 29, 2012

#6: The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

Master thief Parker runs afoul of the mob, and goes under the knife to get a new face; broke, he gets involved in an armored car robbery against his better judgement, and it continues to go more and more haywire in The Man with the Getaway Face.

This is the second book in the long-running Parker series by Donald Westlake.  I have read Westlake steadily over the years (and once got to direct him on a TV show) but had only skimmed the surface of this pseudonymous series.  When Darwyn Cooke did a graphic novel version of The Hunter I became interested again and picked up the first few novels for my beloved Kindle.

Parker is a very tough, amoral crook who singlemindedly flattens anything in his way, including shady partners, nosy bystanders, aggressive cops, and other inconveniences. 

In this outing, a very fragile alliance of criminals unravels quickly; hampered more by the fact that Parker's plastic surgeon gets murdered, with Parker being a prime suspect.  It probably won't surprise the reader to find out that crime does pay, and Parker ends with an eye on more illegal exploits.

I enjoyed this very hard-boiled crime story and will pick up the next Parker novel before long.

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