I’ve fallen in love with the existential crime noir novels by French writer Pascal Garnier (1949-2010). In their write-ups of Pascal Garnier's work, a number of reviewers, including the great Irish author John Banville, cite the Parker novels by Richard Stark. What's that? Richard Stark books share much with Pascal Garnier, you say. My interest was piqued - thus my reading and posting a review of Richard Stark’s Slayground.
As any aficionado of crime fiction knows, Richard Stark is a pseudonym for outstanding American author Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008). And all 24 Richard Stark novels feature Parker, a tough, supersmart master of his chosen craft - just the man to plan and pull off a seemingly impossible heist.
Slayground makes for one hell of an exciting, action-packed yarn, the literary counterpart of riding one of those world-class loopy, high-speed roller coasters - thrills from start to finish.
Here's the set-up in a nutshell: It’s winter, all ice and snow, and Parker’s driver crashes the getaway car. Parker grabs the sack of dough ($73,000) and makes a run for it, solo. There’s only one escape route - an amusement park. Little does Parker know this amusement park, Fun Island, currently shut down for the winter, is completely surrounded by water, the only entrance/exist being the front gate. Parker also doesn’t know the amusement park is under the control of big-time mobster Al Lozini.
With the help of 2 crooked cops and nearly two dozen of his own thugs, Lozini wants the money and he wants Parker dead. After a 7 hour delay (damn those 2 cops who can’t get off of road block duty!), Lozini and his small army enter Fun Island to hunt down Parker. But head honcho Lozini fails to realize what caliber of pro he’s up against.
In the book's Forward, Charles Ardai asks if Richard Stark aka Westlake could invent a situation so extreme even he as author couldn't get Parker out. In other words, is Parker tough enough, smart enough, resourceful enough to handle 20 to 1 odds when he's trapped on a small island in freezing winter?
I'll leave the tale's unfolding slam-bang-boom to each reader.
Permit me a segue for several strokes of compare/contrast. Recall I mentioned Pascal Garnier. Here's how a Richard Stark novel stacks up with a work by Garnier:
Parker is all action. As Charles Ardai puts it, Parker is a doer and doesn't spend a lot of time on contemplation or introspection. Pascal Garnier's men are the exact opposite: continually brooding over the past and more inclined to cynicism and reflection than action.
Slayground is an intricately constructed, complex puzzle with one possible solution: Parker escaping out the front gate. With Pascal Garnier there's no constructed puzzle and no clear-cut solution; rather, what happens at the conclusion of each tale, who lives and who dies, is anybody's guess right up until the final page.
With a Richard Stark novel, the reader knows exactly what they are getting: Parker and a hoist. With Pascal Garnier, each novel features a different main character, the reflective, morose chap can be a hit man, journalist, retired bureaucrat, artist, fiction writer or railroad worker and the arc of action can veer off in any number of directions.
However, there are similarities between the two authors: the length of their novels tends to be on the shorter side, their language is crisp and accessible, there's a strong element of violence, they both write compelling page-turners.
I admit my comparison between Richard Stark and Pascal Garnier is unorthodox but I wanted to take a stab. I also wanted to let Richard Stark fans know about a French crime noir author that's absolutely first-rate.
American author Donald E. Westlake
"Parker said nothing, but glanced at the back of Dent's neck, and the two tendons were standing out there, just as Dent had said. The elevens are up. When the number eleven shows in the tendons on the back of a man's neck, he's finished, everybody knows that. Parker didn't waist time trying to lie to the old man." -- Donald E. Westlake, Slayground
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