Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Picking up where 2004's NOBODY RUNS FOREVER left off, this begins with Stark's anti-hero Parker being pursued by cops, police dogs, helicopters, and a large posseafter a bank robbery gone bad. Climbing up the side of a mountain with no apparent means of escape, he runs into an armed townie named Lindhal who offers the criminal a hiding place. But Lindhal has a price.
Unjustly fired by the racing track he used to work at, he wants to take his revenge, and he wants the fugitive Parker's help.
Like the previous twenty-two Parker adventures, the pleasure in the story comes from watching the sociopath Parker do his thing without remorse or regret, and seeing how normal people react to this walking crimewave.
Since empathizing with a hero who kills, tortures, steals, and shows zero emotion is impossible, Stark shows us the dreams, hopes, and fears of the supporting cast. Some of them we like. Some of them we don't. And we never know who Parker is going to kill at any given moment.
I read my first Parker book in the early 1980s, and was entranced by the clipped prose, the detailed descriptions of criminal activity, and reading the point of view of someone who is an irredeemable criminal, yet can't be characterized as evil.
Parker, who hasn't really evolved much in the last 40 years, is basically the human equivilant of a shark. He isn't malevolent or sadistic. He's simply single-minded in purpose, and his purpose is to survive. Robbery is how he makes his living, and he'll get the job done by any means necessary.
Like the previous Parker novels, this one involves a caper where the carefully laid plans get screwed up by human error, and not everyone gets out alive.
Parker remains as fresh and as compelling as he was forty years ago, and Stark's genius lies in making us root for the bad guy, even as we fear he's going to kill someone we like.
Parker has been portrayed several times in movies (Lee Marvin, Peter Coyote, Robert Duvall, and Mel Gibson have all had a shot at it) and many crime writers, including Max Allan Collins, James Ellroy, Stephen King, and Dan Simmons, have been influenced by Stark, who is really author Donald Westlake.
The reason for his longevity and success is obvious: Stark writes great crime novels with an unusual protagonist. ASK THE PARROT is no exception.
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