Flashfire - Softcover

Richard Stark (pseud. Donald E Westlake)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446677906 ISBN 13: 9780446677905

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2001

Synopsis

Melander likes to do things flashy. When Parker finds himself working with Melander on a bank heist in a mid-sized midwestern city, his job is throwing a Molotov cocktail into a gas station. The resulting explosion sends the cops and fire trucks to the east side of town, while Melander and his gang plunder the bank on the west side. Parker doesn't care for flashy. And he doesn't care for Melander's plan for a new heist, one that will clean out Palm Beach of a lot of very expensive jewelry. But what Parker really dislikes is Melander's intention to use the proceeds from the bank job to capitalize the Palm Beach job . . . including Parker's cut. Melander is very polite about Parker's not wanting to go in on the Florida heist, and very sincere about paying Parker his share . . . with interest . . . after the jewelry job goes down. But that's not the way Parker works. Now he's tailing the gang down South, with his own plan for getting his own back . . . and the entire swag of gems besides.

About this title

Review:

Richard Stark's professional criminal, Parker, is so hard-boiled he could make an egg cry. Blunt and matter-of-fact (the less charitable might say cold and calculating), he has perfected the art of theft. Unfortunately, perfection can be a relative term, a concept made vulnerable by the honor--or lack thereof--among thieves. When Parker joins forces with three other crooks to rob a Nebraska bank, he's prepared for a gentlemanly division of the proceeds, not for a double-cross. But his colleagues have other plans for his share: it will be their seed money for a $12 million Palm Beach jewel heist. What's Parker to do but make his own plans to steal the Palm Beach loot from the double- crossers?

Working his way across the Southeast in a series of carefully executed robberies and changes of identity, Parker arrives in Palm Beach, where he finds more barriers along the path of revenge than he could have imagined. Chief among them: a diabolically clever plan by his former partners; a real estate agent named Leslie with an unfortunately sharp sense of character; and a team of professional hit men out for Parker's blood (but why?).

In his third outing after a long retirement by Stark (the pen name of Donald E. Westlake, revered for the comic capers of his bumbling crook, Dortmunder), Parker is in fine form: steely, sardonic, detached. Stark's acidly funny depictions of Palm Beach and its native fauna are a bonus:

Alice Prester Young knew she was a herd animal, and enjoyed the knowledge, because the herd she moved with was the very best herd in all the world. For instance, here she was, at five-thirty this Thursday afternoon, in her chauffeured Daimler, with her new husband, the delicious Jack, to pick up just the perfect jewelry for tonight's pre-auction ball, and she knew when she arrived at the bank she would be surrounded by her own kind, chauffeured and cosseted women with attractive escorts, all coming to the bank (the only bank one could use, really) because this particular bank stayed open late whenever there was an important ball in town, just so the herd could come get its jewelry out of the safe-deposit boxes.

Not to be missed by fans of gritty noir, nor by those who prefer their crime cocktails with a comic twist: Stark and Parker will give you both. --Kelly Flynn

From the Publisher:

5 1.5-hour cassettes

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0446677906
• ISBN 13: 9780446677905
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288