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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 9: The Score

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 9: The Score

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The Score by Richard Stark (Pocket Books, 1964), reprinted as Killtown by Berkley Books in 1973

What is it?

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.

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Neverwhens: S.E. Lindberg’s Grave’s Daughters — an Imbalance of Familial Humors may Destroy a World

Neverwhens: S.E. Lindberg’s Grave’s Daughters — an Imbalance of Familial Humors may Destroy a World

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Grave’s Daughters by S.E. Lindberg (Ignis Publishing, June 24, 2026). Cover by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme

There is many kinds of world-building. Some create worlds so adjacent to our own, they simply are shadows — a slight change of name, a slight change of history. Others use an Earthly template — Bronze Age, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Victorian — and then layer their own elements of magic and science atop; while others yet create wholly distinct, carefully articulated “other worlds” that are the characters of the story themselves.

This is not what S.E. Lindberg writes about.

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Who Watches the Watchmen? Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

Who Watches the Watchmen? Space Cadet by Robert A. Heinlein

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Space Cadet (Ace Books, May 1971). Cover by Davis Meltzer

A book with the title Space Cadet is a little hard to take seriously; not many people can help thinking of the slang meaning. But it wasn’t used that way when Heinlein wrote it in 1948. If some people didn’t take it seriously, it was because science fiction as such wasn’t taken seriously — but Heinlein himself was quite serious about it.

In fact his novel was the first public use of the phrase, though it became better known after the television show Tom Corbett, Space Cadet bought the right to use it from him in 1950 — enough so that in 1953, Porky Pig appeared in Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century as an “eager young space cadet.” The expression might have suggested youth and naiveté, but not being out of touch with reality.

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The Weird Must Flow: The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Volume 2, edited by Michael Kelly

The Weird Must Flow: The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Volume 2, edited by Michael Kelly

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The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Volume 2 (Undertow Publications, August 18, 2026). Cover by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

Weirdness is often part of horror, so we might call it a sub-genre that editor Michael Kelly has decided to further explore (after an excellent previous anthology) by collecting a number of dark short stories penned by a group of distinguished authors.

As a reviewer I enjoy the privilege of focusing on the stories that I’ve especially enjoyed, especially on the basis of their “weird” character.

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Stop the Madness: Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz

Stop the Madness: Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz

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A Canticle for Leibowitz (Bantam Books reprint edition, August 1976). Cover by Lou Feck

In Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, the humor is bleak, and the future worse. First published as a series of three stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1955-57, and then assembled into a fix-up novel in October of 1959, Canticle is a novel pinned like a helpless butterfly to the Cold War terror of nuclear annihilation – a notion that was then fresh and febrile, but has now faded into the background, as Miller predicted, to our sorrow, that it would. The book itself remains a damning, furious read, yet it comes across, mostly, as contained – peaceful, even – as bucolic as any given warhead, up until it’s armed.

Miller’s dismay at humanity’s trajectory spills across every page, but this is no screed. He’s a story-teller, and a thoughtful, crafty one, and so he buries his polemics inside a cautious tri-partite structure, along with enough Latin to make this non-Catholic take to his on-line translator (a trick that Miller, in ‘59, could only dream of).

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 8: The Mourner

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 8: The Mourner

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The Mourner by Richard Stark (Pocket Books, 1963)

What is it?

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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Dark Muse News: Mad Shadows Book Four: All the Colors of Darkness by Joe Bonadonna

Dark Muse News: Mad Shadows Book Four: All the Colors of Darkness by Joe Bonadonna

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Mad Shadows 4: All of Colors of Darkness by Joe Bonadonna (305 pages, July 18, 2026). Book design by Ruth de Jauregui

Some mysteries leave no fingerprints or footprints — only shadows, strange colors, and the dead. As Dorgo the Dowser investigates necromancers, demons, and a zombie plague, he discovers that darkness comes in many shades.

Book 1: Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser blessed our bookshelves in 2011 (winning the 2017 Golden Book Readers’ Choice Award for Fantasy). The protagonist wields a dowsing rod to sense otherworldly signatures, but this is no Harry Potter wand trickery. Bonadonna’s style is more in line with Michael Shea and Fritz Leiber, and his Mad Shadows tackles supernatural mysteries. In television terms, this would appeal to fans of The X-Files , Supernatural, or Grimm. The author has been a blogger and regular guest at Black Gate forever, and his love for cinema shines through his work. We at Black Gate have already tracked Dorgo’s adventures across three volumes, so we provide a tour guide here to showcase the series.

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Samurai Noir Meets Boardroom Politicking: The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

Samurai Noir Meets Boardroom Politicking: The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

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The Last Contract of Isako, by Fonda Lee (Orbit, May 5, 2026). Cover by Thomas Walker

I spent my professional working life as a freelancer, temporarily employed by various corporations, ad and media companies, start-ups, and consultants on a project, on-call, or contractual for a stated number of months basis. Work might last a month or two, sometimes as much as a year, and then I never hear from the employer again; others develop into long-term relationships, albeit at time with gaps (sometimes long gaps) between assignments.

As a “disposable asset,” I cost the organization less (even as I earn higher pay because there is no overhead expense) and am easier to terminate than a salaried employee. While in today’s gig economy job-seekers often have little choice but to settle for contract work, I turned down offers of full-time permanent employment (though “permanent” is a misnomer given the trend of corporate “restructurings” and “force redeployments” and other such euphemisms to disguise layoffs).

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 7: The Outfit

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 7: The Outfit

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The third Parker novel: The Outfit (Pocket Books, 1967)

What is it?

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.

Quick and Dirty Summary

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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Mary Poppins by PL Travers

Mary Poppins by PL Travers

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Mary Poppins gave a superior sniff.

“Don’t you know,” she said pitingly, “that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”

Ultimately, I have Baird Searles (or you have to blame) to thank for pointing to P.L. Travers‘ original Mary Poppins books. To quote the entry in his A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy (1982),

Those who know P.L. TRAVER’s acerbic creation, Mary Poppins, only through the persona of Julie Andrews, do not really know Mary Poppins, despite the best efforts of that charming actress. Mary Poppins seldom has a kind word for anyone, almost never smiles except at heir own prim reflections, and can get four children washed and in bed with No Nonsense Whatsoever.

I didn’t rush out and buy the books, but his words always lingered in my memory, and when I saw the books for sale in the old Borders in the World Trade Center, I bought the first one, Mary Poppins (1934), and promptly devoured it. Strains of the book and its sequels can be heard in the Julie Andrews’ movie, but there are deeper, more mythic moments that I imagine Walt Disney wanted no part of.

Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia in 1899. She took to the stage as a teenager, creating for herself the stage name Pamela Lyndon Travers. For several years she traveled in Australia and New Zealand as part of a Shakespearean company. In New Zealand, she became a published poet and later a primary writer for the women’s sections in a Christchurch newspaper.

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