"Parker kept climbing. There was no way to know how high the hill was. He climbed to the north, and eventually the slope would start down the other side. He'd keep ahead of the dogs, and somewhere along the line he'd find a place to hole up. He could keep away from the pursuit until dark, and then he'd decide what to do next. He kept climbing."
--Nobody Runs Forever, Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)
i'd just started reading his stuff again, the parker novels. i'd read them long ago at new college during a non-stop read of all things detective or criminal. parker was a criminal. parker was a sociopath. parker killed remorselessly & drank & fucked. i liked the guy, i remembered.
reading it again, i noticed the skills first. perfect jumpcuts, simple dialogue, quickly drawn characters, & the prose. that quote has it all there. simple stuff but hard, very hard, to pull off.
they've made a lot of his books into a lot of bad movies. the last one was a terrible mel gibson vehicle. awful. but john boorman's "point blank" w/lee marvin did it right. lee marvin is the perfect parker. marvin is the guy you see in westlake's parker novels when you read them. there really aren't any actors like marvin anymore. hopefully, you don't know any characters like parker. & you don't read novels like westlake's parker novels anymore either.
his first three parker novels(published first between 1963-1965)have just been re-released w/the university of chicago imprint:
the hunter
the man w/the getaway face
the outfit
Prolific mystery writer Donald Westlake dead at 75
The author of more than 90 books collapsed from an apparent heart attack
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