Tag Archives: donald westlake

The Sour Lemon Score, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on September 28, 2018 by

The twelfth entry in Westlake’s Parker series, The Sour Lemon Score (1969) is also the last of the “Score” books to debut as a Gold Medal paperback. The “sour lemon” choice for the title (assuming it was the author’s choice … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

The Getaway Car, by Donald Westlake

Posted on September 22, 2018 by

This post is not a review in the traditional sense, because I typically don’t like to write opinion articles about nonfiction books. Given that the Gaping Blackbird has been increasingly distracted by All Things Westlake, and that I’ve been poking … Continue reading →

Posted in books, list | Tagged | 4 Comments

The Black Ice Score, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on August 15, 2018 by

The eleventh novel in the famous Parker series, The Black Ice Score (1968) once again features the inventive criminal on a well-planned burglary with a messy and violent aftermath. This time, however, he is hired as a consultant and stays … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

The Green Eagle Score, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on April 20, 2018 by

Donald Westlake’s series character Parker has been called the greatest antihero in all crime fiction. I haven’t enough experience with the genre to credibly make that statement, but with each Parker novel I’ve been increasingly convinced that the series is … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Anarchaos, by Donald Westlake (as Curt Clark)

Posted on March 1, 2018 by

Donald Westlake, of course, was a well-known crime fiction and screenplay writer, by early in his career he published a handful of SF stories. After an acrimonious split from the small club of SF editors (detailed here), he published the … Continue reading →

Posted in books, science fiction | Tagged | 16 Comments

God Save the Mark, by Donald Westlake

Posted on January 2, 2018 by

Novels Films about confidence jobs have, almost by law, a series of short cons and a long con between them. As such, they fall into a familiar pattern of misdirection, a cast of half-drawn characters drifting in and out of the … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged | 5 Comments

The Busy Body, by Donald Westlake

Posted on January 1, 2018 by

The Busy Body (1966) is an early crime novel by Donald Westlake, who under the Richard Stark pseudonym wrote the famous Parker series. Although the Parker books are imbued with their own dark humor, their spare prose style and frequent … Continue reading →

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The Rare Coin Score, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on December 10, 2017 by

The tightly-written, unforgiving heist novel is an enduring sub-genre of crime fiction, and Richard Stark’s Parker series just might be its most sustained multivolume representative. I would have to read the entire series to make that judgement. So far, all … Continue reading →

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The Handle, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on December 1, 2017 by

Donald Westlake’s Parker series, featuring the stoic and violent thief Parker, is a celebrated franchise of paperback crime fiction. The books are renowned for being fast-moving, unsentimental and flavored with irony and dark humor. The University of Chicago Press has … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

The Seventh, by Donald Westlake (as Richard Stark)

Posted on November 14, 2017 by

First, a preamble about the highly regarded Parker series so far . . . Under the Richard Stark pseudonym, the mystery writer Donald Westlake wrote a very successful series of masculine crime novels about the violent thief Parker. Starting with … Continue reading →

Posted in books, crime fiction | Tagged , , | 7 Comments