| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.75
Trade in Butcher's Moon: A Parker Novel for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.75, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Parker has not lost his touch - or his nerve." (Marilyn Stasio, New York Times) "Parker at his best.... If you haven't read Stark, Backflash is the place to start your PhD in crime." (Stephen King) "Whatever Stark writes, I read." (Elmore Leonard)"
Product Description
The sixteenth Parker novel, "Butcher's Moon" is more than twice as long as most of the master heister's adventures and absolutely jammed with the action, violence, and nerve-jangling tension readers have come to expect. Back in the corrupt town where he lost his money, and nearly his life, in Slayground, Parker assembles a stunning cast of characters from throughout his career for one gigantic, blowout job: starting - and finishing - a gang war. It feels like the Parker novel to end all Parker novels, and for nearly twenty-five years that's what it was. After its publication in 1974, Donald Westlake said, "Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone." And readers waited. But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker's as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, "suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor" - and the resulting novel, "Comeback", showed that neither Stark nor Parker had lost a single step. Knocking over a highly lucrative religious revival show, Parker reminds us that not all criminals don ski masks - some prefer to hide behind the wings of fallen angels. Backflash followed soon after, and it found Parker checking out the scene on a Hudson River gambling boat. Parker's no fan of either relaxation or risk, however, so you can be sure he's playing with house money - and he's willing to do anything to tilt the odds in his favor. Featuring three new introductions by Westlake's close friend and writing partner Lawrence Block, these classic Parker adventures deserve a place of honor on any crime fan's bookshelf.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.co.uk.
5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
13 reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
The MAGNUM-OPUS of Parker novels!
18 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
What's common with most Parker novels (and let me say that this is the ONLY common thing about them), is the length, around 200 pages a pop. But for the 20th and final Parker adventure--until the aptly titled COMEBACK was published in 1995--Richard Stark has treated us with a fat 300 page epic called BUTCHER'S MOON. And what a treat it is! Parker, our favorite anti-hero, has once again teamed up with fellow professional thief, Grofield, to recover the stashed loot from a previous score. The loot is long gone, of course, and soon getting it back takes a back seat to getting revenge. Parker calls in all of his old friends--and I mean ALL of 'em, even retired thief Handy McKay jumps at the chance to join the party--because what Parker has planned is nothing short of a war, The Thieves vs. The Hoods, and when it's over an entire town will be cleaned out, a mob outfit will lay in ruins and Parker & Company will be stepping over the bodies.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Hard to find classic!
20 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
It took me 13 years to find this book and I can honestly say it was worth the wait. Those who have encountered Parker before do not need encouragement to read this, but for the first timer this book will open your mind to a totally different kind of hero, one you find yourself rooting for even though you find no common principles between you. Fairness, the ability to see an argument from another's view, willingness to compromise, to Parker these are foreign phrases. In this book a Mafia boss tries to make Parker understand that what he wants is simply not possible, indeed more than one person tries to make Parker see sense. But Parker is as unstoppable and inevitable as the juggernaut, if you attempt to interfere, at best, you can hope he'll ignore you, at worst, you'll make him mad. This book showed for the first time that Parker can get emotionally involved, which he had always resisted as it may have affected his judgement. The "new" side to Parker merely cemented his reputation as the toughest antihero in crime fiction. If you read this book you will read the rest of the series. In a lifetime of reading books this is the only series I continue to come back to. After writing this Stark could not "find the voice" for nearly twenty years. Thankfully this is not the last Parker, but if it had been I'm sure the author would have been justifiably proud to have ended on this high note.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Worth Seeking Out
23 Nov 2005
Format:Paperback
I admit it: I love the Parker novels-- all of them (though the very new "Nobody Runs Forever" is distressingly focusless and my least favorite of the thirty-book series). "Butcher's Moon" is one of the best, though. It has everything we've come to expect from Richard Stark and his creation: terse, propulsive narration, utterly amoral behavior by our protagonist, unpredictable plotting, and brutal action.
The book is hard to find-- I have a copy in a box that I trip over every five years and read again, but I've never seen it in used bookstores in the last 20 years. When it pops up for sale, grab it. And in the meantime, read any and all of the other Starks/Parkers (and all the other Westlakes as well).
The book is hard to find-- I have a copy in a box that I trip over every five years and read again, but I've never seen it in used bookstores in the last 20 years. When it pops up for sale, grab it. And in the meantime, read any and all of the other Starks/Parkers (and all the other Westlakes as well).
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
