Volume 7 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels.
The title applies in two ways.
The string Parker joins for the heist is made up of seven criminals, with each of them expecting to receive a seventh of the take. (There’s a clever twist on this at the end, as well.)
Volume 6 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels.
A “jugger” is a slang term for a safecracker. Interestingly, my research has shown that this was never a term in common use. It seems as if Westlake might have created the term “jugger” himself, and then used it as the title of this book, as well as the description of what Joe Sheer did, back before he retired.
This is sort of the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service of Parker novels. It’s unlike the rest of the series in a number of ways, and was not well-regarded by fans for a while. But, like that Bond film, it has enjoyed something of a renaissance among afficionados in more recent years. Today it’s considered one of the better entries in Parker’s chronicles.
Volume 5 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. This volume arguably features the greatest single heist Parker ever gets involved with. He and an unusually large team of accomplices robs an entire town, all in one night.
It’s also the first time in the series s a heist is not just a side story but the main point of the entire book, from the planning and the execution to the complication and the aftermath. We see a bit of that with the armored car robbery in The Man with the Getaway Face, but that’s the plot of only the first half of that book, and it’s nothing quite like the scale on display here.
Volume 4 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. It is also the first book in the series in which Parker goes on an entirely new heist, unrelated to the previous books. There is, however, a connection back to Bett Harrow, one of the supporting characters in the third book.
What that means is, we now have proof of concept. Parker doesn’t only work in one big, multi-part revenge story, as with the first three books. He’s also great in a more episodic sort of format where he finds a job, puts together a team and goes on a mission. This will remain the pattern for most of the succeeding novels.
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The third Parker novel: The Outfit (Pocket Books, 1967)
Volume 3 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. It is also the third part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.
After surviving an assassination attempt by a killer hired by the Outfit, Parker decides it’s time to settle matters with organized crime once and for all.
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The second Parker novel: The Man With the Getaway Face (Pocket Books, 1963)
Parker has gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get a new face. Now he has to fight to keep his identity hidden, while also planning and executing an armored car heist.
A treacherous waitress and a punch-drunk former boxer complicate those matters tremendously.
This is Volume 2 of Richard Stark’s “Parker” series of crime novels. It is also the second part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.
1999 theatrical release; recut, direct-to-home-video DVD in 2006. Written by Brian Helgeland (with Terry Hayes) and directed by Brian Helgeland (with Paul Abascal).
Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale; Man on Fire; the script for LA Confidential) wrote and directed this adaptation of The Hunter, the first novel in the Parker series, starring Mel Gibson.
As the film was nearing completion, test audiences reportedly reacted poorly to the ending. And yeah, it’s pretty dark and violent and certainly not the triumphant conclusion many Gibson fans were probably expecting. Consequently, Gibson and the studio removed Helgeland from the film. They brought in Terry Hayes to rewrite the ending and added Kris Kristofferson as a new “final boss” villain.
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Parker’s first appearance: The Hunter (Pocket Books, 1962)
Parker begins!
He’s angry. He’s determined. He’s out for blood. And he’s got big hands!
He’s walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York, scaring motorists who glimpse him out the window as they drive by.
Later he will decide he wants the money that was taken from him. At the moment, however, he just wants revenge.
In the first two installments of this series, we looked at the master criminal known as Parker, and at his creator, Richard Stark, the pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used when writing spare and stark but hard-hitting prose.
Now let’s look at some of the many attempts to bring Parker to a wider audience.
The novels are extremely popular with a segment of the population, and so studios and directors have come calling from time to time, with attempts to adapt the character and his stories to film.
But they never quite get Parker right.
Last time we discussed the character of Parker, Donald E. Westlake’s master thief and heist planner.
This time, we’ll look at why we’re talking about Parker at all, here in the hallowed spaces of this fine magazine.
Parker might seem like an odd fit. Allow me, however, to draw some parallels that will help to illustrate how and why the master criminal Parker fits in with classic sword and sorcery characters like Conan the Barbarian. For these two gentlemen have far more in common than one might guess.