Ask the Parrot (Parker Novels) (Hardcover)

~ Richard Stark (Author)
Key Phrases: safe room, Tom Lindahl, Brian Hopwood, Jack Riley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

At the start of the highly entertaining new Parker novel from Stark (aka MWA Grand Master Donald Westlake), Parker is on the lam from the botched robbery in Nobody Runs Forever (2004) when he meets up with reclusive Tom Lindahl, who helps him escape a posse of Massachusetts lawmen and their pack of howling dogs. Tom rescues Parker because he has a scheme to rob a local racetrack where he was fired after blowing the whistle on illegal money laundering, and he needs the aid of a professional thief. Parker joins in not only because he knows a good heist when he hears it, but because Tom offers him a way out of a tight situation. As with any Parker novel, things go to hell in bits and pieces as the tight-knit plan unravels, while Parker, ever the cold-blooded professional, deals with the pitiful attempts of amateurs and law enforcement alike to bring him down. Why do readers love this heartless bad guy? Because he's so damn good at what he does. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Raising the curtain mere moments after Parker began scrambling up a rural Massachusetts hillside steps ahead of the law's baying bloodhounds at the close of 2004's fine Nobody Runs Forever, Stark (perhaps slightly better known as Donald E. Westlake) will paste grins on the faces of readers who dared give the hardcase heist man up for caught. Instead of recapping the botched armored-car job that landed Parker his latest jam, Stark hurtles the calculating criminal off to the races by hooking him up with a horse-track whistleblower out for revenge. As Parker concocts a plan to slip the dragnet and take down a weekend's worth of busted bets on the way out, he is kept in near-constant motion foiling the greedy, harebrained, and sometimes homicidal locals who come sniffing around. In a rare detour from his starkly realistic style, Stark waves his beak at Westlake fans by giving Parker's sour sidekick a nameless parrot that finally finds a reason to speak during an explosively comic scene sure to ruffle the feathers of a few bird lovers. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press (November 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 089296068X
• ISBN-13: 978-0892960682
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #261,830 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #21 in

  Books > Mystery & Thrillers > Authors, A-Z > ( S ) > Stark, Richard

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stark is the Man, February 16, 2007

By	J. A. KONRATH "Thriller Author" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

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.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE PARROT AIN'T TALKING (Well, maybe a little), December 25, 2007

By	Gunner (Bethlehem,Georgia) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)

Amazon Verified Purchase

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You'll be wanting more, December 6, 2006

By	Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

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.