The Hunter

This book pulled me from classical American literature (think Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Hemingway) to hardboiled crime fiction, and I haven’t come up for air since.

I was captured by both the substance and the style—the rich possibilities of an antihero protagonist delivered in a prose as direct and compelling as a bullet to the brain. After this one, I couldn’t stop until I had devoured the entire series!

Westlake gets into the head of a successful career criminal, making available the kind of attitude and thinking that most readers would normally abhor.

Somehow, we don’t in the Parker series. Even as the clever, convoluted plot unfolds, we never stop caring what happens to Parker and we root for him against creepier crooks.

I especially like the authentic feel of the techniques and procedures Parker employs. It’s almost as though Westlake was a criminal himself. His work inspired me to write about what I don’t think most authors have directly experienced—what happens in a therapist’s head.

So I think… show more.

As a huge fan of the movie Payback, when I learned it was based on a novel, I had to read it – it was also the source for the movie Point Blank.

Richard Stark was a pseudonym of the great Amercian crime writer Donald E. Westlake, whose books were usually lighter capers. He wanted to try something different and created the brooding, almost sociopathic, character of Parker, a professional thief who lives by his own code.

The writing is lean and spare, no-nonsense, just like Parker, and there’s real pace and momentum to the storytelling. If you… show more.

Parker. One small word to describe a very big man. He is simply a criminal. And yet, this work-man-like thief is as compelling as Hamlet himself. Book after book, Parker is going to do something illegal. Rob an armored car, a ferry boat, a casino... Sometimes with partners, sometimes without. He’ll be double-crossed, captured, and chased by the police or the mafia, but Parker is as slick as a slippery eel. And what’s more, as you read the books you find yourself rooting for him! And he’s the bad guy! Richard Stark, the pen name for author Donald E. Westlake,… show more.

Professional thief Parker claws his way back from vagrancy and single-handedly takes on "The Outfit," a sub-syndicate of the national Mafia, in order to get revenge on the man who shot and robbed him – and used his own wife to help him do it.

This wasn't the first Parker novel I read, but it was one of the books that made me truly love the character. Parker is an outsider, but he has ties to the mob, and they first close ranks when he threatens one of their own. But when Parker's target is shown to be weaker than… show more.

Parker (first name? last name? nobody knows) is the classic ruthless antihero. We pretty much see the world from his perspective, but we never get inside his head. Trust me; you wouldn’t want to. But we can’t help rooting for him as he makes his vengeful way (in this first of a series) from nearly dead to the “one guy” at the top who can give him back his money (that he stole previously). They’ve tried to capture him on film. Mel Gibson’s Payback wasn’t too bad, but Lee Marvin in Point Blank comes the closest in spirit (though they… show more.