Ask the Parrot: A Parker Novel

Ask the Parrot: A Parker Novel

by Richard Stark (Author)

Synopsis

Together at last. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Donald E. Westlake, one of the greats of crime fiction, wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hard-boiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists and a code all his own. With the publication of the last four Parker novels Westlake wrote--Breakout, Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot, and Dirty Money--the University of Chicago Press pulls the ultimate score: for the first time ever, the entire Parker series will be available from a single publisher.

In Ask the Parrot, Parker's back on the run, dodging dogs, cops, and even a helicopter. Forced to work with a small-town recluse and a group of fools at a gun club in rural Massachusetts, Parker focuses on getting the cash and getting out. It'll be a deadly day at the races.

Featuring new forewords by Chris Holm, Duane Swierczynski, and Laura Lippman--celebrated crime writers, all--these masterworks of noir are the capstone to an extraordinary literary run that will leave you craving more. Written over the course of fifty years, the Parker novels are pure artistry, adrenaline, and logic both brutal and brilliant. Join Parker on his jobs and read them all again or for the first time. But don't talk to the law.

$20.22

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 08 Sep 2017

ISBN 10: 022648565X
ISBN 13: 9780226485652

Media Reviews
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
Like a great white shark that leaves a trail of blood which excites smaller sharks, Parker inspires criminal behavior in the average citizens around him. . . . Parrot is well up to the usual Stark standard. Unusually for the series, it's often funny, laced with Stark's brutally morbid humor rather than Westlake's wry ironies. And as always, Westlake is a master of lean, hardboiled prose and fast-moving, tense scenes that drip with potential violence before, inevitably, exploding into actual violence. --AV Club
Author Bio
Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), a prolific author of crime fiction. In 1993, the Mystery Writers of America bestowed the society's highest honor on Westlake, naming him a Grand Master. For a Parker character guide and infographics, visit Fifty Years of Parker, http: //parkerseries.uchicago.edu/.