18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stark is the Man, February 16, 2007
This review is from: Ask the Parrot (Hardcover)
Picking up where 2004's NOBODY RUNS FOREVER left off, this begins with Stark's anti-hero Parker being pursued by cops, police dogs, helicopters, and a large posseafter a bank robbery gone bad. Climbing up the side of a mountain with no apparent means of escape, he runs into an armed townie named Lindhal who offers the criminal a hiding place. But Lindhal has a price.
Unjustly fired by the racing track he used to work at, he wants to take his revenge, and he wants the fugitive Parker's help.
Like the previous twenty-two Parker adventures, the pleasure in the story comes from watching the sociopath Parker do his thing without remorse or regret, and seeing how normal people react to this walking crimewave.
Since empathizing with a hero who kills, tortures, steals, and shows zero emotion is impossible, Stark shows us the dreams, hopes, and fears of the supporting cast. Some of them we like. Some of them we don't. And we never know who Parker is going to kill at any given moment.
I read my first Parker book in the early 1980s, and was entranced by the clipped prose, the detailed descriptions of criminal activity, and reading the point of view of someone who is an irredeemable criminal, yet can't be characterized as evil.
Parker, who hasn't really evolved much in the last 40 years, is basically the human equivilant of a shark. He isn't malevolent or sadistic. He's simply single-minded in purpose, and his purpose is to survive. Robbery is how he makes his living, and he'll get the job done by any means necessary.
Like the previous Parker novels, this one involves a caper where the carefully laid plans get screwed up by human error, and not everyone gets out alive.
Parker remains as fresh and as compelling as he was forty years ago, and Stark's genius lies in making us root for the bad guy, even as we fear he's going to kill someone we like.
Parker has been portrayed several times in movies (Lee Marvin, Peter Coyote, Robert Duvall, and Mel Gibson have all had a shot at it) and many crime writers, including Max Allan Collins, James Ellroy, Stephen King, and Dan Simmons, have been influenced by Stark, who is really author Donald Westlake.
The reason for his longevity and success is obvious: Stark writes great crime novels with an unusual protagonist. ASK THE PARROT is no exception.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You'll be wanting more, December 6, 2006
This review is from: Ask the Parrot (Hardcover)
Parker has $4,000 in his pocket. Behind him are police--with dogs--determined to take him down for the bank robbery he recently committed. Ahead is a man with a gun...and a proposition.
Tom Lindhal can save Parker from the police, but he needs Parker's help with a plan of his own. Lindhal wants revenge against his former employer, and with Parker's assistance, he thinks he can get it. It looks like a win-win situation--Lindhal gets his revenge and Parker gets away clean, but such things rarely go according to plan.
It is the deviations from plan that provide the most entertainment in Ask the Parrot. The characters of Parker and Lindhal are unique and the interaction between them would be an interesting novel in itself, but twists like Parker becoming involved in his own manhunt in order to stay hidden provide just the right amount of wry humor.
Stark makes it enjoyable to root for the "bad guy" even as we know he's doing the wrong thing and deserves to be caught and punished. Parker is a marvelous protagonist, completely unapologetic for who he is and what he does, and yet readers will still be on his side.
Ask the Parrot is gritty and hard and feels real even in the funny parts. It's not gory or full of unnecessary jokes or gratuitous anything, just hard, tight storytelling that grabs the reader and doesn't let go.
Armchair Interviews says: Every bit is interesting; every bit leaves you wanting more--even the last page.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The title is the only light thing about this vivid, edgy crime novel, April 19, 2007
This review is from: Ask the Parrot (Hardcover)
The name "Parker" represents a lot of pleasure for this mystery and thriller fan: it's the name of a favorite author- Robert B. Parker- who several times a year delivers thoughtful, fast-paced novels featuring a variety of tough guy (and girl!) protagonists. It's also the name of Richard Stark's professional thief character, who every year or two undertakes a dangerous, complicated caper for our reading pleasure. "Ask the Parrot" is no exception, and it has the added bonus of a slightly different feel, a slightly more edgy situation, than we've seen in the past. Here, you see, Parker is coming off the cliffhanger ending of the previous entry- "Nobody Runs Forever"- so first he has to deal with all the cops on his tail from that story before getting involved in the new caper featured here. And when the new caper commences, he still has to deal with the threat of capture from the old caper that blew up in his face. It's all great, page-turning stuff, laced with all the usual Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake) reliables: dangerous situations; edgy, no-nonsense prose; wry observations about the quirks of American society; and vivid characterizations, often of life's losers, near-losers, and fringe characters. Twenty-some books strong now, this series is still a dynamite read.
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