I’ve fallen in love with the existential crime noir novels by French writer Pascal Garnier (1949-2010). In their write-ups of Pascal Garnier's work, a number of reviewers, including the great Irish author John Banville, cite the Parker novels by Richard Stark. What's that? Richard Stark books share much with Pascal Garnier, you say. My interest was piqued - thus my reading and posting a review of Richard Stark’s Slayground. As any aficionado of crime fiction knows, Richard Stark is a pseudonym f...

Slayground, Parker #14, is surely one of the best of the series. Parker faces cops, corrupt cops, thugs and principled thugs, (he is himself a principled criminal), in a web of doublecrosses that are woven like an intricate spider web. A preface by Charles Adai makes it clear Stark is an artist; just as a poet may work within the constraints of the sonnet to create very different effects, so does the master detective storyteller work creatively within this genre. Slayground begins not with a usu...

He leaned against the wall beside the window and watched the gates. Very soon now, the hunted was going to become the hunter. After a botched armored car robbery (hint - when pulling a heist, make sure your wheelman is well vetted), Parker grabs the loot and heads for the nearest refuge - a closed-for-the-season amusement park. Before long, the place is surrounded by crooked cops and mobsters. They want the money, and they want Parker DEAD. Now it's Parker, with four bullets in his gun, versus f...

I didn’t realize this for a long time but my first exposure to Parker was in the movie loosely based on this book starring Peter Coyote that ran on cable a lot in my teen years. I only vaguely remembered it, mainly for it’s use of George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone in the early scenes of the movie. (Thank you for writing that song, George. If it weren’t for you, there would have been countless film and television scenes where we would have had no clue that the character was ’bad’ without your he...

to hell with y'all and all your crummy new years resolutions: 'lose weight, stop smoking, go vegetarian (<--although, that you should do!), be more/less adventurous, etc...' boring. totally boring. my resolution: gonna read every one of richard stark's 'parker' novels this year. and they're all gonna be those lovely gorgeous knockout new U. of Chicago editions. y'know what... lemme throw a few more chips in the pot: i'm gonna read all the ones currently available - that's 15 of 'em - this month....

The title "Slayground" is a takeoff from the phrase "Amusement Playground." It is the fourteenth Parker novels, following "Deadly Edge" and preceding "Plunder Squad." "Lemons Never Lie" comes between "Slayground" and "Plunder Squad," but that is really one of the four Grofields, not a Parker. "Slayground" is the flip side to the Grofield novel "Blackbird." Parker, Grofield, and another guy pull off an armored car heist and the car flips over in the getaway process. Grofield ends up in the hospit...

The armored car heist would have gone without a hitch if Parker hadn't been saddled with a second-rate driver. Now Parker's holed up in an amusement park that's shut down for the winter. Only mobsters and crooked cops are after the $73,000 Parker has from the heist and know where Parker is...The non-standard Parkers are some of my favorites and this is one of them. We only get to see the aftermath of the heist. The rest is one long cat and mouse game involving the park's attractions between Park...

3.5 stars. A relatively easy armored truck rip-off goes awry when a second rate driver skids on ice and flips the car. Parker sees his partners immobilized, grabs the loot, and seeks sanctuary in a local amusement park, closed for the winter. Some crooked cops and gangsters see Parker entering the park, and decide to relieve him of his ill-gotten gains. The rest of the novel is Parker seeking to escape the park alive (with scant resources) against formidable odds as the gangsters call in reinfor...

June 2017 Review: Rereading with a group. I'm surprised so much time has passed since I last listened to this. Parker is put into a seemingly impossible situation & the action never stops. The situation & solutions are very realistic, too. No superman antics. A lot of hard thought & patience punctuated by ruthless action. My comments on Ardai's foreword still mostly stand, save that I liked it better. I don't think Ardai did it on purpose. IIRC, he was asked to write something about the Parker

If you liked the movie Home Alone and could do without the comedy bits then you might be interested in trying Slayground, the fourteenth Parker novel by Richard Stark. A relatively easy job just bungled by the poor driving of a second rate wheelman Parker knew he shouldn't have brought on to the job. Stuck near an amusement park as police arrive he jumps the fence to the park and finds himself stuck with only one possible exit and mobsters descending on the back looking to relieve him of the loo...

This is the fourteenth entry in Richard Stark's excellent series about Parker, the amoral criminal whose carefully-laid plans almost always come undone because of some unforeseen accident or because of an act of carelessness by one of the other crooks involved in the plan. In this case, it's the getaway driver who screws everything up. This is not the driver that Parker would have prefered, but it's the driver that Parker had to settle for. And it's Parker who will now have to pay the price.Park...

I prefer to read novels knowing as little as possible about them going in, so Slayground represents a special achievement for me: I began reading the often-discussed, often-praised fourteenth Parker novel knowing absolutely nothing about it--I even managed to tune out the illustrations on the cover of the Chicago reprint (except for the always-present Big Gun). So, in that spirit, I'm not going to tell you anything about it, either.

More thrill-ride than heist tale: can Parker survive being hunted by twenty(ish) armed men inside an otherwise empty amusement park??And the answer is............hold on to your hats!!! Three Screaming Stars

One of the best Parker books. It opens a little slowly and then slams into what is generally called a thrill ride. Trapped in a closed down amusement park with killers "stalking" him. The account(s) of Parker moving through the closed rides and booths, trying to find something he can "use", the picture of him searching for a place to hid the loot (mcguffin?) all come together to give you a sort hold your breath story.It's one of those that you kind of go Whew once you finish it.I find myself a l...

The late Donald Westlake is another one of those authors who's been praised to skies (especially after his death) and whose work I've been meaning to check out--again.I can't remember which Westlake book it was that I tried first--something with Dortmunder in it, I think. It had to be Dortmunder because that was his comic character and Westlake was trying so hard to be funny. Ha ha, I said, and put the book down without finishing it.Then I read all those glowing post-mortems on Westlake's career...

The non-standard Parkers are not my fav type of a Parker book, i enjoy the heist planning,the build up,the betrayels and so on most. But this one was amazing,so different,such a thrill reading Parker stuck in an amusement park with mobsters chasing him,his 72 000 dollars. Great sparse,lean prose as usual, makes me think of Hammett in the best Parker books.Parker was shown not to be invincible in that he was weakened in his usual tough body by the weather,his other problems. I also liked how it w...

Wow!!!!! I was surprised and so impressed with what Parker did to outsmart these guys. It’s scary and suspenseful.A normal person would be helpless, but not Parker. I read a lot, and I think I’m hard to surprise, but this one did it. This book is a great example showing how Parker is a brilliant strategist with keen insight into others.I usually don’t like “first person” stories. This is an example of how rich a story can be when you don’t use first person, because you get inside others’ heads.

Quick and very entertaining read about Parker trying to evade Mafia hoodlums in a fairground where there is only one exit and he has to improvise regarding weapons. 14th in the series but hardly any reference to previous books so fine to read as a standalone. How no-one has managed to make a decent movie of this, I don't know as the story seems to be ideal for that. Having read the first three Parker books, I have skipped to book 14 and am going to read books 14 to 16 in sequence finishing off w...

“Parker jumped out of the Ford with a gun in one hand and a pocket of explosive in the other.”

Parker and two accomplices rob an armored car. Their driver flips the getaway car on an icy road, and Parker, along with $73,000 in a duffel bag, is the only one to walk away from the accident. He is near the entrance of Fun Island, an amusement park closed for the winter. From here, Richard Stark throws himself onto thin ice of coincidence and a style of flashy plotting her seldom indulges. Two cops see Parker enter with the bag, but since they are in the process of getting the monthly pay-off

PROTAGONIST: ParkerSERIES: #14RATING: 4.0WHY: Parker and 2 colleagues pull off an armored car heist when things go wrong. They have a car accident, and Parker escapes with the loot. He scales the wall of a nearby amusement park but is seen doing so. There is only one exit, and it is being watched. Parker sets up a series of traps, and soon a flock of mob men and cops are looking for him. It’s not a spoiler to say that he eventually gets out. The book is different from the others in the series—it...

I probably liked/disliked this book for completely polar opposite reasons than most reviewers. I thought the claustrophobic feel of Parker being trapped in a “fun” amusement park and the entire setting of this to be a major plus of the book. I mean, here is Parker with nowhere to go, nowhere to run. Outmanned, with only one means of escape. He’s in quite a jam. This really heightens the tension really from the opening moments. Where this book excels is giving you a clear picture of Parker and hi...

Most everyone’s consensus favorite as Parker novels go and I can see why. Trapped in a closed-for-the-season amusement park, Parker is hunted by a seemingly endless supply of killers. The environment allows for countless ways to outsmart and outmaneuver his adversaries. Very enjoyable but my favorite of the “classic” Parkers remains The Black Ice Score, which, not surprisingly, seems to most people's least favorite. So it goes.

Notes:Currently on Audible Plus

Some what a departure from the previous novels. It's all about the unfortunate aftermath to what would have been an otherwise successful heist.Parker is trapped in an amusement park closed for the season. Needless to say - he survives to continue on in this excellent series. It's how he survives that makes this interesting and different.

I love the Darwyn Cooke comic book adaptations of the Parker novels but have never read one in the original prose-only format. Slayground jumped out at me as the place to start partly because that’s the next one Cooke’s adapting and I want to see the difference between the original and the adaptation, but also because of the delicious setup. Parker is a master thief who, alongside two accomplices, one of them his longtime partner Grofield, knocks over an armored car and makes off with $73k. But

Cornered like a rat in a maze, Parker is stranded in a closed amusement park after an armored car robbery turns sour. Mobsters, thugs and half-assed cops are waiting to get one over on Parker but little do they know ... the hunters will be become the hunted.Slayground is top notch. By maxing out creativity and fun in this entry, Stark (Westlake) hits a home run as this book is by far one of the most unique offerings in the series. Let's stop and think about it for a second ... a career criminal

Die Hard Parker at the FairgroundReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (February, 2013) of the Random House hardcover (1971)Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.Slayground finds Parker...

Luc Sante wrote, "Some Parker novels are fantastically intricate clockwork mechanisms ("The Hunter", "The Outfit", the seemingly unstoppable "Slayground", the epic "Butcher's Moon")..." This book takes place about 5 years after Joe Sheer's death, which happened in the 6th book, "The Jugger" which I just read a few days ago. Parker's working on his eighth job since then, but still trying to catch up and rebuild from the events in that book.Alan Grofield is in this, another Stark character that I

Slayground is a okay book but for the series falls flat. It feels more like a stand alone novel that had the names replaced and a last chapter added so we see Claire and the new home they have set up. It isn't that the writing is bad, it is close enough to classic Parker, but it feels more like an 80's action movie or a video game. Parker isn't plotting out some big score or revenge, instead he is really just taking out bad guys in an amusement park during the off season. Still, some good does c...