Well, let's see here. There's been a lot of Richard Stark hoopla around our little corner of Goodreads lately, and I am proud to offer this review as minor corrective to the unbridled enthusiasms unleashed herein. Despite whatever I may say in the course of this review that might lead you to believe otherwise, I did actually enjoy this book. But it is slight, insubstantial, and clunky at times. I'd like to say, with some slippage in the analogy, that it's the equivalent of watching one of those women-in-peril television movies that Lifetime rebroadcasts. They're kind of dumb and pointless and obvious, but the fact of the matter is that at the end of the two hours you've somehow sat on your ass and watched the whole damn thing, so it must have been successful in some important sense. (This is an especially noteworthy success—for me, at least—since not even the big-budget, much-loved Inception achieved it.) Despite the fact that the TV movies are often poorly-executed and have all their plot points transmitted via smoke signals from miles off, I stick around to see if psychotic stalker Jack Wagner manages to rape Judith Light in an empty hockey arena or to find out if the vindictive blonde sex-kitten in Shannen Doherty's college rock band murders her in retaliation for Doherty beating her in a talent contest when they were kids. Richard Stark—at least in The Score—is not really what I would call a very good writer. And Richard Stark's editor is not what I would call a very good editor. Witness this passage:The prowl car was a Ford, two years old, painted light green and white, with Police written in large letters on the doors and hood and trunk. The dashboard lights were green, and there was a small red dot of light, like a ruby, on the radio.I don't know about you, but I am kind of disappointed that Stark didn't tell us whether the upholstery was contrast stitched or whether the heater vents were set to floor or bi-level. (Before you start second-guessing, none of the details Stark reports RE: the police car is relevant to anything in the book. For instance, the small red dot of light does not later blind a would-be assassin—or some other comparable hijinks. These used car ads are just written up by Stark, inserted into the text, and never referred to again.)There is really no psychological depth in this book whatsoever. People merely do things and say things. Occasionally things they say allude to a hypothetical human emotion or a living, breathing subjectivity, but more often than not these allusions are of the explicitly useless varieties. (In one scene, for example, two accomplished safe 'juggers' argue about whether to blow up the safes or drill them. The fact that preferences exist seems to indicate that they are not wholly automatons. This is encouraging.) There is one character—named Grofield—who likes to quote Shakespeare and has a lot more personality than the rest, but still... it's only a relative difference and wouldn't count for much in any other book.Another problem with Stark's writing style (at least in this outing) is that he doesn't have much sense of pacing and narrative momentum. In the first half of the novel, we hear the characters discuss their plans for a heist in specific detail. And in the second half of the novel, we see the characters actually execute this same plan, for the most part successfully and in keeping with the plan (until near the end). This redundancy seems to violate a commandment of Writing 101 to me. If I were Stark's teacher, I would have told him merely to explain the big picture of the heist at the beginning and then allow us to see the plan as it unfolds. (Again, a good editor probably should have edified him. But I keep forgetting that this is genre fiction; devoted fans probably find these tropes and weaknesses essential to the 'comfort food' quality of the books.)Anyway... would you believe I still kind of enjoyed the book? It was pretty dumb, but I enjoyed it. It would be ideal for a short plane ride or a long wait in the doctor's office where the other reading options are Parenting and Golf Digest magazines.
a small town in north dakota sits deep in a narrow valley. a single road the only way in or out. parker and eleven men head down at midnight and methodically take over the tiny police department then the fire department then the phone switchboard. once the town's defenses have been neutralized and communication is cut off from the outside world, the team knocks over the town's two banks, the jewelry store, and then robs the town's entire payroll. a heist to the extreme! forget one bank, one store, one person, one job... let's do an entire town in a single night! that's the score. and it's terrific. spare and cold and angry and intelligent -- and there are some good women in there, too: one trashy, one sweet, both willing to toss it all away for a life of adventure and crime and hard-as-rocks men. fleshy asked, after my review of slayground, why, with such a rapturous review, did i only slap it with four stars? well, i think it is a 4 star book but the score might very well be a 5. but i'm still giving it 4. lemme explain. charles ardai, in his introduction, writes: "Reading the Parker novels is a little like watching a jazz musician at work. The performance begins with a familiar melody, the unadorned restatement of a theme, but then the performer cuts loose, interpreting, elaborating, inverting, transforming, improvising. At a certain level of abstraction, of course, the Parker novels are all the same... and yet, Stark somehow manages to assemble these elements into a thoroughly new book. Bix Biederbecke famously said he never played a solo the same way twice, and neither did Stark. It may be the same song each time, but all the notes are different."yup. stark works off a familiar template and it's great: he usually begins with the second act, as the action is already moving along, and then explains all we really need to know from the first act along the way. we then watch parker create and interact with his team, intellectually figure out how best to do 'the job', and then it all goes into effect and we watch parker improvise as shit falls apart and/or goes wrong. now i believe the score to be, on one level, a perfect little crime book. but it definitely feels a part of something larger: as if this individual book is just one chapter in 'the life of parker' -- analogous to, say, updike's rabbit stories in which the individual novels might deserve 3 or 4 stars, but taken as a whole, it's an undeniable fiver. so, maybe i judge too harshly. maybe a five star book doesn't need to be a giant epic encompassing and totaling much more than the sum of its parts... who knows? who cares? i know parker wouldn't. he'd grunt and walk away. next up: the hunter
What do You think about The Score (1964)?
You pinpoint the reason this is one of my favorite Parker novels.The believable heists that are only as complicated as they have to be are the highlight of this series for me. So the well-crafted heist combined with the way Parker controlled the variables and the greater-than-usual number of men on his string made this one a real pleasure to read."The Score" could just as easily have been called "Management 101 for Career Criminals."
—Jeff
This is the original hard boiled tough guy. Stark (Westlake writing as Stark) boils the essence of a smart no-nonsense tough guy down from the work of the greats that wrote detective and crime fiction before him, and created Parker. Forget the movies you may have seen - be they timeless classics or modern dreck - and do yourself a favor and read these. If you like crime fiction you have to check these books out. The Chicago Press has re-released them in sharp stylish new paperbacks that are inexpensive and look great. Perfect reading for a single afternoon: they are short, fun and really pop. They are like Pringles: I bet you can't read just one.
—Alex
Master thief and anti-hero Parker is getting antsy and bored. So when the call comes offering him a chance to head up to Jersey City to hear about a potential job he takes it. And what a job it is - the plan is to immobilize an entire small North Dakota town and rob it blind. Even for somebody like Parker, who has ice water in his veins, this is an audacious plan. Can a dozen men really take out an entire town and get away with the loot? This was another exciting fast-paced Parker adventure, Stark (aka Donald Wastlake) takes us through the planning, the heist and then the moment it all goes pear-shaped. Parker is such a refreshing character because he has no pretenses or morals that get in the way of the crackling plot. The plot is fast paced and the dialogue is sharp and fun. It's easy to see how the series lasted as long as it did, with the wealth of detail and Stark's mastery of the form.
—Tim Niland
