The black ice score (Atlantic large print) [Unknown Binding]

"The Black Ice Score" was originally published in 1967, and for a good many years has been out of print and virtually impossible to find. Fans of Richard Stark's "Parker" series owe a debt of gratitude to the University of Chicago Press for republishing the book, along with several others in the series.

Parker is a hardened professional criminal who has virtually no moral reservations about the crimes he plans and commits, even when he must occasionally kill someone who gets in his way. He may be one of the most amoral figures in all of crime fiction, and yet Stark (a pseudonym of Donald Westlake) never wimps out and attempts to curry favor with the reader by giving Parker some ultimately redeeming feature. Still, you can't help liking the guy and rooting for him to succeed.

In this case, Parker is on vacation in New York when he is approached by the representatives of a small African nation. Their president, they claim, is about to abandon the country, taking much of the country's treasure with him. In fact, he has already sent the loot--hundred of thousands of dollars worth of diamonds--to New York ahead of him with some confederates. The men who approach Parker want to hire him to plan a way for them to steal the diamonds back and return them to the country's treasury.

Parker ultimately agrees and then, as is always the case in these books, complications ensue, testing Parker's abilities and throwing the plan and everyone involved into jeopardy.

"The Black Ice Score" falls into the middle of this series, and it's not as good as most of the other entries--which is not to say that it's a bad book, just that it's not up to the standards of many of the others.

As a result, this is a book that will probably appeal mostly to hard-core Parker fans who want to read the entire series. Readers who want to experience it for the first time, would probably be best advised to begin with "The Hunter," which is the first book in the series and a very good read. It has has also been published under the title "Payback," the title of the Mel Gibson movie that was made from the book.

A Half Dozen More Heist Books from Richard Stark

SunPost Weekly August 5, 2010 | John Hood
[...]

Gotta luv the folks at University of Chicago Press. Not only have they decided to bring back Richard Stark¡¯s belovedly badass Parker novels, but they¡¯ve been doing so in sequence, with a niftily packed series that smacks back to the ¡¯60s beginning and ¡ª Zeus-willing ¡ª won¡¯t let up till its 21st century end.

The beginning, for those few who don¡¯t know, was The Hunter (1962), which was reissued two years ago alongside the next eight in the long and lauded run. It was no happy accident that the initial nine reprints coincided with the author¡¯s death. (Stark, nee Donald E. Westlake, died on New Year¡¯s Eve 2008). What was a happy accident though, as John McNally so helpfully pointed out in a Summer ¡¯09 Virginia Quarterly Review piece on Parker called ¡°A Stark World¡±, is the series itself, which simply began as a way for Westlake to publish more books.

As Westlake told Charles L. P. Silet in a 1996 interview:

¡°[T]here¡¯s always been a belief in publishing that [a publisher] can¡¯t publish more than one book a year from any one author. So I thought it would be interesting to have a pen name¡­ to aim for a paperback original this time. So I did this book with the assumption that the bad guy has to get caught at the end . . . I sent [The Hunter] to Bucklin Moon at Pocket Books, who said, ¡®I like this book and I like this character. Is there any way you could change the book so that he would escape at the end and then you could give me three books a year about him.¡¯ And I said, ¡®I think so.¡¯¡±

Within two years Westlake, writing as Stark, would have three Parker novels in the pulp paperback racks. And by the time he was finished there¡¯d be a total of twenty three. And while 23 books in 46 years might not sound like a whole helluva lot, remember Westlake was writing Parker as a sideline, and in addition to his Dortmunder series of capers (14 novels, beginning with 1970¡äs The Hot Rock), he left behind over 100 novels.

But we¡¯re here to talk about Parker, the stoic, merciless, heist man. And it is Parker to whom pulpdom owes its love of bad guy heroes.

Or anti-heroes. Okay, so Jim Thompson did that bad-guy-as-hero thing before Westlake (or Stark) or anyone else. But as McNally also points out, though Thompson¡±took darkness to new depths, [he] used humor to offset the bleakness surrounding his characters¡¯ lives.¡±

Not so Parker. In fact if there¡¯s one instance where the man even smiles, I don¡¯t remember it. And laugh? Forget about it. Though some of the hurdles he and his ¡°string¡± have to heave over during the course of their various heists would be incredibly comic if they weren¡¯t so damn absurd.

Then again when the heists are as daring as those Parker and his crew undertake, absurdity is pretty much a given.

Take The Seventh (1966) and its robbing of a college football game¡¯s game day take. Or take The Handle (¡¯66) and its knocking off of an entire island casino. Or take The Score (¡¯64), where he and his endeavor to rob an entire town. Each begins as a brilliant plan. And each descends into a whirlwind of violence and vengeance. And through them all, Parker remains, resolute and ever ready to do whatever is required, without a hint of hesitation.

The six-pack of kickass that most recently racked consists of The Green Eagle Score (¡¯67), The Black Ice Score (¡¯68) and The Sour Lemon Score (¡¯69), as well as Deadly Edge (¡¯71), Slayground (¡¯71) and Plunder Squad (¡¯72). As you might suspect from their titles, the first three are pretty much straightforwardly crooked heist stories (the targets are, respectively, an Air Force base, an African nation¡¯s treasures, and a bank). But not one heist goes off the way they were intended, and Parker is left to pick up ¡ª and often eliminate ¡ª the pieces.

Deadly Edge, too, is a heist story, and the rock concert Parker and company knock off gives it a decidedly different beat. In Plunder Squad Parker goes head-to-head with a former accomplice who soured things in The Sour Lemon Score and it¡¯s got the giddy undercurrent of payback written right through it. Slayground, in contrast, finds Parker caught in an amusement park after knocking off an armored car, and the mobsters and cops who want what he¡¯s got never get know what hits them, even as it ¡ª and him ¡ª stares them down in the face.

Any one of the above is a worthy romp through a remarkably different America, when crime was crime and criminals took some pride in its commission. And any one of the above will leave you itchy for more. Best though would be to begin at the beginning with The Hunter, so you can see just how circumstances created the man Parker would come to be. But whether you decide to hop on at the beginning, in the middle or at the end, you¡¯re gonnawanna hold on. Because the Parker series doesn¡¯t come with seat belts or safety nets, and it¡¯s very easy to be thrown from this kinda wild ride.

BTW: If you dig this series ¡ª and you will, trust me ¡ª Hard Case Crime also has a buncha Stark/Westlake titles to choose from, including Lemons Never Lie (with Parker¡¯s occasional sidekick, Alan Grofield) and The Cutie (Westlake¡¯s debut, which was originally published as The Mercenaries).

I just finished this for the third time-- seems I read the Parkers about every ten years, and they never get stale. Though the early Parker novels were written about 40 years ago, they still sizzle with action. The characterizations are terse and to the point, and the writing is lean and propulsive.

Parker is a psychopath, but he's almost normal here-- the earliest books are exercises in single-minded brutality, but by this volume, about 4 years along in the canon, he's hooked up with Claire and is therefore vulnerable in some way that he wasn't earlier on. Still, he's all business, and when the excrement hits the fan, he's ready and willing to do anything it takes to survive and prevail.

Never read a Parker novel? Best to start with the first in the series: it's still the easiest one to find, under one of three titles, "The Hunter," or "Point Blank," or "Payback" (as a tie-in from the Mel Gibson film of some years ago). Once you meet Parker, you'll want to read more.

It's time to republish all of these in a cheap uniform edition.