Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel Paperback – September 1, 2010

PLUNDER SQUAD by Richard. Stark.Interesting the way Parker has no normal social interaction with others. A married woman knocks on Parker's motel door, hoping to get something going with Parker. He won't even answer the door. And then he packs and leaves the job. He won't be part of a group that includes a woman like her.The ending action scene was good - how he got out of a bad situation where he was outnumbered. There were two other good scenes where Parker reacted to someone trying to kill him.THE SERIES:This is book 15 in the 24 book series. These stories are about bad guys. They rob. They kill. They're smart. Most don't go to jail. Parker is the main bad guy, a brilliant strategist. He partners with different guys for different jobs in each book.If you are new to the series, I suggest reading the first three and then choose among the rest. A few should be read in order since characters continue in a sequel fashion. Those are listed below (with my star ratings). The rest can be read as stand alones.The first three books in order:4 stars. The Hunter (Point Blank movie with Lee Marvin 1967) (Payback movie with Mel Gibson)3 ½ stars. The Man with the Getaway Face (The Steel Hit)4 stars. The Outfit.Read these two in order:5 stars. Slayground (Bk #14)5 stars. Butcher's Moon (Bk #16)Read these four in order:4 ½ stars. The Sour Lemon Score (Bk #12)2 ½ stars. Firebreak (Bk #20)(not read) Nobody Runs Forever (Bk #22)2 ½ stars. Dirty Money (Bk #24)Others that I gave 4 or more stars to:The Jugger (Bk #6), The Seventh (Bk#7), The Handle (Bk #8), Deadly Edge (Bk#13), Flashfire (Bk#19)DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person. Kindle count length: 2,812 (283 KB) 198 pages. Swearing language: moderate including religious swear words. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: two referred to with no details. Setting: around 1972 various U.S. locations. Book copyright: 1972. Genre: noir crime fiction.

That was Parker’s big mistake in Plunder Squad which seems to set off a chain reaction of bad events and a run of bad luck culminating in an art heist gone wrong. “Plunder Squad” might be one of my favorite Parker novels yet due to the “Murphy’s Law” edge and adage that if "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." And a lot goes wrong in “Plunder Squad” beginning with Parker leaving George Uhl, another career criminal, alive and having to hunt him down before he can commit to his next heist. The “score” is ultimately jinxed from the beginning without giving away the plot, but “Plunder Squad” is another Parker page turner for the reader, rest assured.Richard Stark’s descriptions, observations, and dialogue in “Plunder Squad” prove him to be at the top of his game at the time it was written in 1972. Still entertaining 50 years later.

This is the best of the Parker mysteries that I have read to date.Parker gets involved in three increasingly complex art heists, each one with the typical parabola. The first two fail to come off because Parker is too smart to get involved in shaky plans with unreliable people. The third caper, the hijacking of a truckload of modern paintings under the noses (literally) of Illinois State Police, is intricately planned, but anyone familiar with the great Robert Burns poem on the theme of best laid plans can predict in general what happens. I won't spoil things more than that. The denouement and the action leading up to it are quite good.Thrown into the mix of this short, but action and plot packed book is Parker's attempt to track down a guy he needs to kill and should have killed years and books earlier. Both story lines are very well written, with vivid scene descriptions and some really excellent character depictions. Parker comes in contact with well drawn and varied characters, both his confederates in the third heist, as well as some of the side characters in the revenge meme.There is more psychological depth here than in some of the other Parker tomes. The concluding pages of the revenge subplot are striking in that regard. Additionally, for once Parker is not dealing with an anonymous "city" somewhere--nowhere--in the USA. Anyone who has spent any time in Indianapolis will see that Stark/Westlake has done his research and actually has a feel for what Indy looks like. Similar good writing depicts lower Manhattan in the final pages.Stark really upped his game in this book. Very enjoyable

This is a standard review for the University of Chicago published Parker series by Richard Stark. Overall the quality of the stories is very high. They are tightly plotted with dialogue fitted to the voices of the different characters. The descriptions of places and objects are brief but clear and connected to the characters' perceptions.Now the negatives: These stories average about $9.99, and I expect that some editing must have been done to warrant so high a price for what are rather short novels. There are egregious editing errors in every book in the series, some with only a few, most noticeably the first four books in the series. The rest have over a dozen spelling and grammar errors that were no doubt due to the OCR scanning process on the original books/manuscripts. The software just can't identify certain words and doesn't always fix hyphenated words back to whole words. Having the choice all over again, I would look for the paper backs and read those. The books just aren't worth the $9.99 average price.*****Much like the book "The Score" this one has a large crew, and I loved it, especially due to the almost non-existant OCR scanning errors.

After two of the best Parker novels (Deadly Edge & Slayground) Plunder Squad is frustrating in the length of time it takes to get to the point. It seems interested in tying up some some loose ends (not least, an important loose end from The Sour Lemon Score) before Parker gets to business. And when he gets to business, the plot is fairly routine, without a well-defined adversary or intriguing hook. Part Three (normally the part in these novels where we discover what has been happening what has been going on behind the scenes) is weaker than usual, and the pay-off at the end somewhat anticlimactic.

さまざまな事態にパーカーがどのように対応するのかを、例によって簡潔な文体で記しているのがとても心地よいものです。