Customer Reviews

The Jugger (American Crime)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Joe Sheer, a fine old man, retired safecracker (jugger), has been Parker's contact man for years. Parker receives a disquieting letter from Joe and wonders if he is getting a little old for the job. Parker decides to pay him a visit, not to present a gold watch, but perhaps to help Joe along to his eternal rest. The usually overly careful Parker flies to Sagamore, Nebraska to have a hands-on visit with Joe using his clean-as-a whistle alias, Charles Willis.

Picture Smalltown U.S.A. Friendly folks, picket fences, nicely clipped lawns, tree shaded lots, porch swings, and you have Sagamore. Now picture deadly purposeful Parker strolling down the sidewalks. Neither one of them are quite ready for the other. Alas for Parker, there is no heist this time, Joe is already dead, and the local and state police are taking far too much interest in Charles Willis. Parker has to put his superb planning abilities in high gear to settle the natives, and solve the mystery of Joe's alleged buried fortune. Parker's sole interest in this is to get Charles Willis back to Miami unknown and uninvestigated.

This is a fine Parker outing where Parker is the only one in Sagamore with good sense, and with much exasperation has to lead the law to the truth. To get the job done, a few homicides happen, and a left over lady with "the eyes of a pickpocket and the mouth of a whore" helps him out. "The Jugger" is best read after you have read a couple other Parker novels for background. For all other Parker aficionados, this is choice.

Talk about waking from a coma. The Jugger begins confusingly - good confusingly, that is - with Parker in a hotel room in a small town in Nebraska. There's a dead guy in the obituary column, an annoying guy hanging around Parker, a cop outside. Everyone knows more than the reader at this stage, but nobody really knows anything. Turns out after a few chapters that the dead guy is the titular Jugger - a locks man who knew too much about Parker. The annoying guy and the cop think the dead guy knew something else - like where his life's earnings are hidden. Parker needs to make sure no one else knows what the dead guy really knew.
The story unfolds piece by piece, and Parker responds in the only way imaginable for one of fiction's most amoral characters.
Tough, very tight.

Parker is threatened. His long time friend, Joe Sheer, a retired safe cracker or jugger, wrote him a letter begging for his help. Joe Sheer is the only person alive that knows Parker's cover character Charles Willis. Parker spent many years and much money to build his cover and if it is exposed he would have nowhere to lay low with confidence.

Parker travels to Joe's retreat, a tiny town in Nebraska, and discovers that Joe is dead. Since he visited the town using his alias name, he realized that he was now exposed. But what happened to Joe? Why did Joe beg him to come? The Jugger is the story of how Parker survives this major threat.

Investigating Joe's death, Parker learns that several people are convinced that Joe had a large treasure stash and all of them want to find the money and get a large cut. Parker, who believes his old friend never had such a treasure, stays around to try to save his "safe" alias. This is the toughest job Parker has had. Can he save himself?

The Jugger is a violent, action packed thriller. Parker's clever and sometimes desperate actions lead to excitement and intrigue. I highly recommend The Jugger.

Imagine you have just worked your way through a 550 page Henry James novel, - a valuable and worthy experience, but strenuous nevertheless - , what do you need next, for your reading career? Exactly, you need something short, and fast, and fluffy, and yet not dumb...
Or for any other excuse to downgrade your reading matter?
You can't choose better than Stark's Jugger from 1965. Short, fast paced, thrilling, and also, something not normal for the Parker series: mysterious. Not a heist tale, as is the normal case for `hero' Parker, but a mystery combined with an escape thriller.
The man, Parker, gets dragged into defensive action. A business partner has run into trouble and has implicated Parker with the law... his whole legal front is in danger to come down crashing. There is serious danger that his fingerprint might link his legal alias with one or the other of his criminal adventures.
How did this happen and who is behind the unraveling of the seemingly safe front construction? For most of the book we follow Parker trying to figure out the who and the why of the problem. We follow him building an emergency cover fairy tale to safeguard his precarious chosen world... but as in real life, stories have no ending. To quote another favorite bad man, Albert Swearengen: the world ends when you die. Not before that. Nor should books, if they are honest.
Highly recommended for a brief relaxation.
A footnote on rating: when I give this little novel only 4 stars, then only out of respect for Henry James, who got only 4 from me for his Princess Casamassima. Within its limits, The Jugger is nearly perfect enough for 5..

I read that Stark thought "The Jugger" was his worst book. I disagree. I think I see where he's coming from, though. This story and book are out of character for Parker. He actually has to explain himself a couple of times and his enemies are outside of his world. So, it's a bit different from the previous books. I think, however, that this is the best plotted since the first book. I really enjoyed the novel and it could easily stand alone outside of the series. I hope "The Seventh" comes back in print soon.

Reportedly Donald Westlake considered this the dud in the Parker series, but the website "The Violent World of Parker" argues that he misremembered it: Westlake said he let Parker get soft in his decision to go help out an old friend, but that's not the plot at all. In fact he's going to see him to find out if he'll have to kill him to keep him quiet. But when he gets there the friend is dead, and Parker has to figure out why it happened and who the players are, with no idea of the lay of the land or what he-- and they-- are looking for. It's an especially mean book-- though the people Parker ultimately kills deserve it, in at least one case it's distinctly sad and pathetic-- and the only flaw I could point to is that Parker, invincible and unplagued by the slightest self-doubt, seems to deal with the reality of someone like him growing older and weaker without it ever crossing his mind that he might wind up that way, too. If Westlake had explored that territory for once, allowed those tiny cracks in Parker's implacable exterior, it might have been the masterpiece in the series.

If you've gotten around to searching for the Jugger, the sixth novel in the excellent Parker series, then you no doubt know what an outstanding series of crime novels this is. So no need to over explain the story and set up.

The Jugger continues the fine tradition of telling a brisk crime novel in four parts, this time with Parker visiting Nebraska to deal with the Joe Sheer, his "Jugger"; a sort of agent who sets Parker up with other criminal to plan his various criminal enterprises.

What i love about this series so far is how Stark leaves threads in each novel which lead to the next. It gives the series a pulp fiction-esque feel which makes you want to pick up the next book. Joe Sheer is a character who was referenced many times in the previous installments of the series, but here we see Parker on his way to assist Joe with some trouble, or silence him forever to ensure whatever trouble Joe is in does not find it's way to Parker.

This novel is tough, lean as well told and stands with the best of the previous novels. Those put off (just a little) by the previous installment's (The Score) slightly slow pace will find the series is back on track here.

My only complaint, which I have made about every other entry into the University of Chicago's reprinting of the series, is the extremely cheap cover design. How can such a revered series be reprinted with such drab covers? At $14 one would expect a better package in which to wrap this above par novel.

If the look of the books on your shelf are important, as it is with me (I am a graphic design buff) you may wish to track down an older edition, such as the 1998 ed. from Warner books, or better yet, the first edition from 1965 published by Pocket books and sporting a beautiful Harry Bennett cover. That's what I did.

Fans of the Parker series will of course want to read this one but if you're just randomly picking a Parker novel or Westlake (Richard Stark is one of his pen names) novel this is not a great indication of either the brilliance of that series or the ability of the great late writer.

The Jugger has no caper for Parker to plan, it's simply a story of Parker making a visit to an old acquaintance to see if his displays of nervousness are going to expose Parker's time off from his career alliance Charles Willis. You see Joe Sheer (the Jugger) used to be a top safe cracker and valuable reliable colleague to Parker on many a caper, but he's been sending Parker some letters saying he's terrified and too old to solve the problem. Parker decides to look into his problem and if nothing else end the problem by killing Joe himself. Only problem is when he arrives he finds out Joe is dead, that he's under surveillance and an annoying unreliable criminal named Tiftus wants to team up with him to pull of the crime. Only problem is Parker has no idea what Tiftus is going on about or why he is being watched. It also takes a while for the reader to learn what is going on and many who didn't want to read everything involving the great Parker character may well have stopped in the first few pages before getting to the jest of the story.

If you do decide to get The Jugger make sure you've read the previous novels in order. You really need an appreciation of Parker's character to enjoy this one. In order up to this one, they are The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face (aka The Steel Hit) The Outfit and The Score (aka Killtown). The next book in this great series is The Seventh.

parker finds out that his go-between, joe sheer, is dead. he comes to his town for the funeral and ends up mixed up with a hick cop and an unknown person who both are looking for joe's mysterious hidden fortune that parker doubts even exists. many twists and turns from parker being knocked out in a basement by some person wearing a burlap sack for a mask to faking someones suicide. a great book!

also, very refreshing if you've ever read a book in which the author disgustingly over describes everything; two pages to describe a room, three to describe someones feelings, a chapter to describe a single conversation about some unnessecary story, examples are anne rice (interview with the vampire, queen of the damned, etc.) and robert ludlum (the bourne identity, ultimatum, etc.). good writers, but five hundred pages of fluff make you want a more readable two hundred page story that you may even have the patience to re-read eventually. this is that kind of writing, constantly gripping, no boredom, and no non-sense. not to say that the parker novels are devoid of description but that you don't get bored wondering if the author was just trying to make his book bigger by cramming in more information about what a character was thinking, wearing, feeling, seeing, what he had for dinner the night before, what color hair his mother had, where he went to high school, rather than just what is pertinent to the immediate story. in the jacket of one of the books is a quote by someone that talks about how parker is the non hero. not the anti-hero (criminal with a good heart or something) and certainly not the hero, i thought this was very accurate, parker is just a bad guy. he is out to make money and anyone who gets in his way is so much chaff to be discarded.

Richard Stark (aka the late Donald Westlake)hits another bulls-eye in the brilliant Parker series. The action is always taut and relentless and the writing terse. The no-nonsense nothing wasted style perfectly suits the protagonist, Parker, as he works his cool professional way through another complicated heist. This is pure hard-boiled nihilistic noir at its very best! Vale Donald Westlake!