“Richard Stark writes
a harsh and frightening story of criminal warfare and vengeance with economy,
understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity—a remarkable addition to the
list of the shockers that the French call romans noirs.”
—Anthony Boucher, New York
Times Book Review
The Outfit now knows that Parker has a new face. They don’t
have a very pleasant relationship of late – for details see The Hunter and The Man with the Getaway Face. And so, when The Outfit begins, a hired assassin is sent to kill Parker,
interrupting him in bed. Furious, Parker extracts information from the killer,
and from that moment on, he declares war on The Outfit. First, he goes after
the guy who fingered him and sent for the assassin. Next, he’ll hit The Outfit
where it hurts most: in the wallet.
This is how he’s going to do it: he spends time writing
letters and visiting old colleagues in the business. He lets them know what the
score is. Historically, professional thieves leave The Outfit’s operations
alone. They don’t bother The Outfit, and vice versa. But now, The Outfit is
overreaching itself, making trouble for Parker. And Parker’s friends don’t
necessarily have a huge loyalty to
Parker, but they know just how easy it would be to pull off Outfit heists. Many
of them have been walking around with plans in their head for years. Now they have an excuse to pull
the trigger and hit The Outfit for all they’re worth.
It seems that the expression “the third time’s the charm”
applies in particular to Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake). Under the Westlake
name, his third Dortmunder novel is the best I’ve read thus far in that series.
Now, as Stark, this third instalment is the best of the Parker series thus far!
A lot of things come together to make this the case. In the
first place, the narrative structure is really strong. In my last Stark review,
of The Man with the Getaway Face, I
pointed out a technique that Nick Jones has dubbed the Stark
Cutaway. It works like this: first you see events from the POV of Parker’s
quarry, then suddenly they see Parker emerge from the shadows, gun in hand.
Then, you flash back and go through these events all over again, this time from
Parker’s POV.
The Outfit uses a
brilliant variation on this. First, we see the head of The Outfit, a man named
Bronson, as he receives the news that a professional thief has just hit one of
The Outfit’s operations. Then, we flash back and see how the robbery evolved
and just how smoothly it ran. After returning to Bronson for a bit, we get
treated to a whole series of robberies, one after the other: bang-bang-bang! You see the
preparation that went into the job, and in some perverse way, you almost admire
the ruthless efficiency and professionalism of the thieves.
But what’s Parker up to all this time? First, he returns to
New York and he hits The Outfit personally. Then he finds a man named
Fairfax—he had an encounter with him in The
Hunter. He extracts some information from Fairfax and next, he strikes a
sneaky deal that ensures that The Outfit will eventually leave him alone. If
Bronson doesn’t see reason, his successor turns out to be a far more reasonable
man. We’ve already seen Bronson before, and he’s a treacherous double-crossing
devil like Mal Resnick, only he has a lot of money to back himself up. Somehow,
you feel that if Parker’s forced to remove Bronson, the world will not suffer
because of it.
Parker, as always, is a fascinating central figure. I
personally don’t approve of his actions—I certainly hope nobody out there does!—and there’s one scene in
particular where he brutally attacks a dog. It’s hard to take. Sometimes,
Parker barely seems human. His sense of humour is very sardonic and can be rather
cruel. The only person he’s ever really had feelings for is his late wife, and
now that she’s dead, he wants to forget she ever existed. He has no real friends—the only reason so many
people tackle The Outfit is because they have an excuse—there’s no friendship-fuelled motive, except arguably from
Handy McKay, a thief who appeared in The
Man with the Getaway Face. But he never crosses the line into becoming a
truly disgusting person like Mike Hammer. He isn’t sadistic for the sake of
sadism. Every one of his actions is ruthlessly fought out and he is without
morals or scruples. He is guided by nothing but iron-clad logic—he won’t kill
you if he doesn’t have to, but if he decides he does have to, he won’t think twice about it. It’s a scary picture.
All things considered, The
Outfit is a hell of a great book. It has plenty of action and detail
when you see all those consecutive robberies. Parker is as always fascinating,
and the stark atmosphere just draws you right in. And here’s another reason
these books work so well—they’re short.
Parker doesn’t lecture the reader, the author doesn’t moralize or philosophize.
The world is the way it is, so let’s work with what we have. The prose is lean,
mean and to the point. It’s remarkably efficient and tight writing, and practically every sentence is needed for the
structure to work as brilliantly as it does. This isn’t a detective story, it’s
a thriller—and a brilliant one at that!
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