Comeback
Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark
After the bloodbath of Butcher's Moon, the action-filled blowout Parker adventure, Donald Westlake said, "Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone." And for nearly twenty-five years, he stayed away, while readers waited.
But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker’s as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, "suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor" – and the resulting novel, Comeback, showed that neither Stark nor Parker had lost a single step. Knocking over a highly lucrative religious revival show, Parker reminds us that not all criminals don ski masks – some prefer to hide behind the wings of fallen angels.
Praise for Comeback
“Stark's hero Parker returns from a 20-year retirement in this taut caper … [T]he real thrill is seeing Parker back in action again in a world where all the key players are so completely on the same wavelength that they know exactly what everybody else will do, and where each ruse and double-cross is good only till nightfall. If you're new to Stark's work, think of all the comic Dortmunder capers he's written under his real name--Donald E. Westlake--but with as baleful an absence of humor as in The Ax.”
- Kirkus
“The voice, feel, and characterizations here are gritty and chillingly noir … he succeeds in demonstrating his total mastery of crime fiction.” Thomas Gaughan
- Booklist
