THE JUGGER (Parker No. 6) by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)

I continue to be fascinated by Stark’s character Parker. He has no redeeming social values. He is an ugly human; a crook and a killer and has the emotion of a Univac. Yet still the writing is beautiful, as stark as the author’s pen name. I was going to write nom-de-plume but such cultured terms are completely out of place when talking about Parker. And that is the fascination: the writing is so seemingly simplistic that its powerful effectiveness is mysterious.

In this short novel; they are all short, so short that I consider them to be just chapters in Parker’s life; we see Parker a bit off balance. He has to extricate himself from a sticky situation that does not concern a heist. He is out of his element. He makes mistakes and, in the end, he has to regroup. I am looking forward to the further criminal adventures of Parker, and one day even aspire, there’s one of those fancy words again, hope even to figure out why these stories are so compelling.