Books

Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark

On a sunny October afternoon a man is running up a hill. He's not dressed for running. Below him are barking police dogs and waiting up ahead is a stranger-with a rifle, a life full of regrets, and a parrot at home who will mutely witness just how much trouble the runner, Parker, can bring into an ordinary life. The rabbit hunter is Tom Lindahl, a small-town lonely heart nursing a big-time grudge against the racetrack that fired him. He knows from the moment he sees Parker that he's met a professional thief-and a man with murder in his blood. Rescuing Parker from the chase hounds, Lindahl invites the fugitive into his secluded home. He plans to rip off his former employer and exact a deadly measure of revenge-if he can get Parker to help. But Tom doesn't know Parker and that the desperate criminal will do anything to survive-no matter who has to die...

Praise for Ask the Parrot

“The nonpareil, the hard-boiledest of the hard-boiled, one of the best-loved names in all of noir: Richard Stark… Parker is truly frightening… the plot is classic Westlake deadpan rhapsody.”

- The Guardian

“Do you like your crime fiction pared to the bone, with never a wasted word? Are you addicted to narratives that move with bullet-speed velocity, in which every action is fraught with reined-in menace? Then Richard Stark is undoubtedly your man. … The Parker books are treasures – and this latest is vintage Stark... Jet-black humour along with the usual bruising exposition…the ranks of Richard Stark will be swelled by a book as trenchant as anything we’ve had from this author.”

- Daily Express

“Read Ask the Parrot and find out why Stark is the kind of writer who, whatever else you’re reading, you stop dead and read his latest.”

- Independent on Sunday

“This is classic Richard Stark, the grandmaster of American crime fiction… Parker is, of course, the genre’s most captivating anti-hero… Stark’s prose is as lean, hungry and tightly plotted as ever. Plus Stark has an uncanny ability to create compellingly complex subsidiary characters…Superior entertainment.”

 - Daily Mirror

“The Parker novels continue to be invariably well-written, exciting and hugely entertaining. Stark’s crisp, convincing dialogue is as good as Elmore Leonard’s… Parker is amoral, ruthless yet curiously sympathetic.”

- The Times

“A new novel in the Parker series by Richard Stark is always cause for celebration … Stark is one of the great exponents of American noir crime fiction.”

- Daily Mail

“Lean, clean, page-turning prose… The crisp prose is straight from the cooler.”

- Metro

“It is wonderfully laconic with a plot structure that condenses 48 hours of Parker mayhem and tightens like a noose...A memorable and enduring character.”

 - Sunday Herald

“Stark’s spare downbeat style brilliantly evokes the amoral anti-hero as he shrewdly manipulates the reader... Stark keeps the reader in suspense right to the satisfyingly ambiguous end”

 - Scotland on Sunday