Ask the Parrot

September 11, 2006
At the start of the highly entertaining new Parker novel from Stark (aka MWA Grand Master Donald Westlake), Parker is on the lam from the botched robbery in Nobody Runs Forever
(2004) when he meets up with reclusive Tom Lindahl, who helps him escape a posse of Massachusetts lawmen and their pack of howling dogs. Tom rescues Parker because he has a scheme to rob a local racetrack where he was fired after blowing the whistle on illegal money laundering, and he needs the aid of a professional thief. Parker joins in not only because he knows a good heist when he hears it, but because Tom offers him a way out of a tight situation. As with any Parker novel, things go to hell in bits and pieces as the tight-knit plan unravels, while Parker, ever the cold-blooded professional, deals with the pitiful attempts of amateurs and law enforcement alike to bring him down. Why do readers love this heartless bad guy? Because he's so damn good at what he does.

September 15, 2006
Raising the curtain mere moments after Parker began scrambling up a rural Massachusetts hillside steps ahead of the law's baying bloodhounds at the close of 2004's fine " Nobody Runs Forever," Stark (perhaps slightly better known as Donald E. Westlake) will paste grins on the faces of readers who dared give the hardcase heist man up for caught. Instead of recapping the botched armored-car job that landed Parker his latest jam, Stark hurtles the calculating criminal off to the races by hooking him up with a horse-track whistleblower out for revenge. As Parker concocts a plan to slip the dragnet and take down a weekend's worth of busted bets on the way out, he is kept in near-constant motion foiling the greedy, harebrained, and sometimes homicidal locals who come sniffing around. In a rare detour from his starkly realistic style, Stark waves his beak at Westlake fans by giving Parker's sour sidekick a nameless parrot that finally finds a reason to speak during an explosively comic scene sure to ruffle the feathers of a few bird lovers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)