THE PARROT AIN'T TALKING (Well, maybe a little)

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	• Ask the Parrot Richard Stark Mysterious Press, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 19 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

THE PARROT AIN'T TALKING (Well, maybe a little)

Ask The Parrot (2006)

When we last left Parker in Nobody Runs Forever, after a big score, Parker was on the side of a hill out in the woods, with police and police dogs coming up the hill, we wondered if this was the end for Parker ( I guess Stark / Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark wanted us to think that since the title was sort of hinting. Well, in Ask the Parrot we start with Parker in the situation we left him in. Above Parker on the hill is Tom Lindahl, a man with a rifle, supposedly out hunting rabbits. Who hunts rabbits with a rifle? I've only known of people hunting rabbits with a shotgun ( preferably a .410 or a 16 gauge) and a beagle dog. Maybe they do things differently where Stark is from.

I think Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark is just playing with us. Maybe he'll get a jury from Los Angeles and get off all together.

As usual Stark is very entertaining with his fast paced tough guy.

Now Parker, Lindahl and a third guy join the posse looking, for, you guessed it, Parker. Something major happens while out looking.

Lindahl wants Parker's help to rob a horse racing track where Lindahl was wrongfully fired from, looks like $100 Large available and Parker needs the money, he presumes the money from the last score is gone since the police have captured some of the other heisters.

Highly recommended for Parker fans. I've already pre-ordered the next one, Dirty Money.

As far as I can tell the other Parker books are:

1) The Hunter (1963; AKA Point Blank, Payback; Parker, by Richard Stark).
2) The Man With the Getaway Face (1963; AKA The Steel Hit; Parker,
3) The Outfit (1963; Parker, by Richard Stark)
4) The Mourner (1963; Parker, by Richard Stark)
5) The Score (1964; AKA Killtown; Parker, by Richard Stark)
6) The Jugger (1965; Parker, by Richard Stark)
7) The Seventh (1966; AKA The Split; Parker, by Richard Stark)
8) The Handle (1966; AKA Run Lethal; Parker, by Richard Stark)
9) The Rare Coin Score (1967; Parker, by Richard Stark)
10) The Green Eagle Score (1967; Parker, by Richard Stark)
11) The Black Ice Score (1968; Parker, by Richard Stark)
12) The Sour Lemon Score (1969; Parker, by Richard Stark)
13) Slayground (1971; Parker, by Richard Stark)
14) Deadly Edge (1971; Parker, by Richard Stark)
15) Plunder Squad (1972; Parker, by Richard Stark)
16) Butcher's Moon (1974; Parker, by Richard Stark)
17) Comeback (1997;
18) Backflash (1998; Parker)
19) Nobody Runs Forever (2004, Parker)
20) Ask The Parrot (2006, Parker)
21) Dirty Money (2007)

Gunner December 2007

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The parrot says, read this!

Ask the Parrot, which was published in 2006, is the latest installment in Richard Stark's (aka Donald E. Westlake) series featuring Parker, a very smart, but not always very successful thief. When the book opens, Parker, who's wanted for a bank robbery in Massachusetts, is fleeing on foot from the police. He's just a few minutes away from having a police dog's canines in his backside when salvation presents itself in the form of a loner with a gun, Tom Lindahl, who figures that having a bank robber around the house for a while could work to his advantage. Lindahl offers Parker a way out and a job opportunity, but the latter comes with risks, of course, and involves Parker in the lives of Lindahl's neighbors to a degree that isn't safe for a man on the run.

Ask the Parrot had been sitting on my shelves for about two years before I picked it up. I wish I'd done so earlier. Stark makes his bad guy protagonist sympathetic despite that he's not given a soft side--at least in this outing. Parker is all competence and professionalism. He's quick on his feet but he also always comes to the party prepared. He appeals precisely because of his competence: we want him to succeed because he takes care to do the job right, even if he is squarely on the wrong side of the law. He is not careless of the lives of others, but neither is he over-concerned about them. That is, he's not squeamish about committing murder, he's just unwilling to attract more police attention than is strictly necessary. Somehow, despite his mischief, Parker retains the allure of the tuxedoed gentleman burglar.

Stark lets us in on Parker's thought processes as he's sizing up a person or a situation. Maybe it's that window into Parker's mind that helps us identify with him. If nothing else, watching him reason himself out of a tight spot makes for good reading.

I confess that I had not read any Parker novels prior to Ask the Parrot. Indeed, I hadn't heard of the series previously. I was delighted to learn when I finished that Stark has published more than twenty previous Parker novels, the first of them, The Hunter, published in 1962. The more the better if they're as good as this one: I'll be happy to get caught up on the master criminal's earlier career.

-- Debra Hamel

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Parker Always Finds A Way!!

Parker, the anti- hero professional thief created by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) over 45 years ago, returns in this novel which picks up where things left off at the end of "Nobody Runs Forever". Parker is on the run from a botched robbery and is exhausted and panic-stricken as police and hunting dogs close in on him as he desperately climbs a hill seeking safety from his pursuers. Waiting for him at the top of the hill is Tom Lindahl, a crusty "local" who makes an instant decision to help Parker escape. Of course, Lindahl, an embittered loner who lost everything he valued after becoming a whistle blower on illegal activities at the racetrack where he once worked, has his own agenda for revenge that includes using this escaped robber to help him rob the racetrack. However, as long time readers know, no one uses Parker...not unless he wants to be used.

Parker listens to Tom's plans and sees a way to make a score...if he can escape the clutches of his law enforcement pursuers and their ubiquitous roadblocks along with slow witted locals who are out looking for him for their own purposes. There is some fun in following as Parker actually joins the citizen "posse" out looking for him as he endeavors to remain free long enough to pull of the planned heist of the race track. Eventually the book narrows down to whether Parker can elude all who are chasing him, pull off the score, escape, and, coincidentally, what happens to Tom and his dreams.

I've tried to analyze why I, and obviously many others, enjoy a lawless character like Parker enough to return to his books as each new one is printed. My reasons include Stark's noir styling that includes fast paced thought provoking plotting coupled with terse, no nonsense language. I enjoy Stark's ability to develop his characters with spot-on descriptions that make you think you have met them somewhere before. And being privy to the thoughts of such a sophisticated criminal mind whose main concern is self survival at all times is fascinating to say the least. He is almost always two steps ahead of those he must contend with.

But most significantly is Parker's self imposed "code" of behavior such as kill only when threatened or necessary that shows him to be amoral yet never evil. Watching Parker's amoral sociopath moving among "straights" is a joy to behold. In "Ask The Parrot" as in so many of his other books, Parker becomes a catalyst for the ultimate character development or erosion of character in those he comes in contact with. He brings out the worst in bad people, the bad in weak people, and the good in strong people. Watching how the townspeople grow or deteriorate when Parker is around is a true joy of Stark's novels.

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OK Read

I'm a hard grader so 3 stars means a blah low average read, not awful. The story is moderatly interesting and the characters are well drawn. The Parker series is long running and famous but this must be below average for the series because it's far from gripping. Not a bad book mind you just not a "gee, what's going to happen next" book. There is no real good guy in the book and you don't really like or root for any of the characters. They are kind of a collection of sad sacks. Finally at the end the author (finally) has the two main characters commit the crime they have been talking about the whole book and go their separate ways. That's it, the end. They both might have been arrested 100 yards from the scene or lived happily ever after with their loot in Costa Rica, who knows. That's dirty pool to my mind, especially after the author was in no hurry to plod through the rest of the story. he could have given us a more definative ending.

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Superb Crime Storytelling

Although it is a sequel to another book by Richard Stark (pseudonym for Donald Westlake), it is the first in the Parker series that I've read.

And it is wonderful. Stark ignores many of the bells and whistles that a lot of crime writers use to 'church up' their stories, and he ignores all of the unnecessary stuff to great effect. I hate to say that this is a crime story on a small scale, but I think it is a very apt way to describe it. There is no 'big score' and no elaborate plan to make the story out to be something that it is not. It is what it is, to use an old cliche.

There is no over-explanation or unnecessary explication at the beginning of the novel. It begins and BAM! you're right in the middle of the story. The characters don't really have much internal monologue, which is refreshing. Their actions seem to explain everything to a T, which, in turn, moves the story forward. The characters are subtly three-dimensional, not full of quirks but 'real' nonetheless.

If you're a big fan of crime fiction, and of Donald E. Westlake or Ed McBain, I think you'll enjoy 'Ask the Parrot'. Don't let the sort-of corny title fool you, it's a great read. Amazing.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Racing through the backwoods of Massachusetts and on the verge of being taken down for one of the biggest and most disastrous bank heists the state has ever seen, Parker runs right into the barrel of a gun pointed from the "wrong" side of the law. A quiet but angry recluse--with only a silent parrot for company--Tom Lindahl saves Parker from the police dogs, while enmeshing him in a dubious, highly dangerous, but potentially profitable scheme. Far more than some aimless indigent holed up in a shack in the woods, Lindahl is a man built on rage and driven by a thirst for revenge. A whistleblower whom nobody listened to, a man tossed aside by a corrupt political establishment, Lindahl now plans a daring act of vengeance, and Parker holds the key.

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