What do You think about Butcher's Moon (1985)?
This is a notable book in the Parker series because for a long time it looked like it’d be the last one that Richard Stark (a/k/a Donald E. Westlake) ever wrote since it was over twenty years before he finally did another one. This one is also a personal milestone since it’s the last Parker novel that I haven’t read before. Westlake died a few years ago, so that means it’s the last new Parker novel I’ll ever read. Stupid death.As a personal ending point for me, it’s a humdinger though. Parker has been on a string of bad luck with all his potential scores going sour, and he’s hurting for cash. He decides to go back to where he left a bag of loot hidden in an amusement park while on the run from gangsters and dirty cops in Slayground. And by amusement park, I mean that Parker amused himself by killing everyone they sent into the park after him.Fellow thief Grofield was in on that heist and Parker asks him to go along and help get their money back, but when they find it missing from the spot Parker stashed it, he thinks the local criminal kingpin’s people must have found it after he left. When Parker decides that you’ve got his money, he’s going to get it back one way or another.After the situation escalates, Parker eventually calls in a crew for a bit of stealing and revenge, and this leads to a kind of review of past novels with characters from previous jobs Parker has pulled showing up. There’s also a feeling that this one is calling back to the beginning of the series where Parker had gone up against a large group of criminals to get back what he felt he was owed.It hit me in this one that although Parker has always been seen as an anti-social bastard who only cares about the money, that he has gone out of his way for the few people that are the closest things he has to friends on a few occasions. He has also earned a lot of respect from his fellow thieves for his bold jobs and never double crossing anyone. You’d almost think that Parker is getting soft in his old age. Until he starts murdering a whole bunch of people.This is yet another great book about one of the legendary anti-heroes of crime fiction. I just wish there were a couple of dozen more new ones waiting for me to read.
—Kemper
Parker is short of cash and pissed. He knows where he had hidden a stash and takes Grofield, the actor/theater director/thief along to help retrieve it from a carnival ride where he had hidden it several years before. Problem is that the money is gone so suspecting it was found by a local mafia boss, Frank Lonzini, he decides to get it back.Unfortunately, Parker and Grofield find themselves in the midst of a mob leadership fight. All they want is to get their money back and leave town, but events conspire against them leaving them no alternative but to stir up the pot, pit one against the other, and still try for the seventy-three thousand, a number that remains immutable. (Had I been Parker, I would have tacked on many thousands for the trouble.)Some marvelous scenes. A particular favorite was Parker’s method for working out which residents might be gone on an extended vacation as he searches for an apartment to use as a temporary base of operations after Grofield is shot.The description of the mobster’s office is evocative and vivid, typical of the sardonic wit that permeates the Parker novels. The room was a disaster, a combination of so many misunderstandings and misconceptions that it practically became a work of art all in itself, like the Watts Towers. It was a den, or studio, or office-away-from-office; called by the family “Daddy's room,” no doubt. The walnut-veneer paneling, very dark, made the already small square room even smaller and squarer, darkening it to the point where even a white ceiling and a white rug would have had a hard time getting some light into the room. Instead of which, the ceiling was crisscrossed with Styrofoam artificial wooden beams, à la restaurants trying for an English-country-inn effect, and the two-foot-by-four-foot rectangles between the beams had been painted in a kind of peach or coral color; Consumptive's Upchuck was the color description that came to Grofield's mind. While the floor was covered with an oriental rug featuring dark red figures on a black background, with a dark red fringe buzzing away all the way around. Would there be a kerosene lamp with green glass shade, converted to electricity? Yes, there would, on the mahogany table to the right, along with the clock built into the side of a wooden cannon; above these on the wall were the full-color photographs of The Guns That Won the West lying on beds of red or green velvet. Don’t you love “consumptive upchuck”?A very entertaining Parker novel, intricate in detail, typical of the other Parkers as things never work out as planned for Parker who has to use his wits to overcome the obstacles. Therein lies their appeal.
—Eric_W
The last of the Parkers for me. And my favorite of the series.Parker is on one of those occasional dry spells and decides to retrieve the money he'd hid from a previous job so that he could manage his escape from the pursuing police and their criminal associates(Slayride). He gets his partner from the job, Grofeld, and when they get there, in the amusement park, the stash is gone.He knows the people who were looking for him back then and goes to them for his money.At the time, it was the last Parker novel for over twenty years and a fitting conclusion. He brings in a number of folks he's worked with in other books and goes after the bad guys, whether cops or out-and-out criminals.Then the double cross happens.One thing one doesn't do is cross Parker. He doesn't take that sort of thing well.
—Randy
