One of my favorite crime fiction series is the Parker series, written by Donald Westlake under the name Richard Stark. Stark wrote twenty-four of these novels featuring the humorless, amoral professional criminal, Parker, who usually recruited or was recruited by other professionals to pull off robberies of banks, armored cars and other such targets.One of Parker's most dependable henchmen was Alan Grofield who appears in several of the novels. Grofield is an actor by profession and he owns a sm...

Alan Grofield is laying in a hotel bed in Mexico City trying to recover from a gunshot wound in the back with a suitcase full of stolen money in the closet when a strange woman looking to escape some thugs comes into his room though the window.We’ve all been there, right?This is a series spun off of Richard Stark’s (a/k/a Donald Westlake’s) better known Parker novels about a professional thief. Grofield started out as a supporting player in those books, and the story of how he ended up in in tha...

Here, Grofield has left Parker and other conspirators, after pulling off a casino heist on a small island off the Texas coast. Grofield has a suitcase filled with money, a bullet wound in his back, and is sleeping most of the time in a Mexico City hotel as he tries to recover from his wounds. In his fifth story window bounds a beautiful pair of tanned legs: Elly. After some witty reparte about how she is just in time to scratch his back, it turns out that Elly is involved in some political intri...

So I guess I wouldn’t recommend you pick this up to read without knowing who the main character is. So, in short, read some of Richard Stark’s Parker series, where Alan Grofield is one of the guys Parker hires on various heists. And he’s obviously popular or Stark wouldn’t have written a four book spin-off series featuring Grofield. But it’s more complicated than that, actually. Stark is just one of the many pseudonyms used by lauded mystery writer Donald Westlake. One of Westlake’s most popular...

Spin-off series are often a bust. Not in this case, so the first book earns an extra star. I really like the Parker books although I'd never want to meet him in real life. Grofield is nothing like him. He's a thoroughly likable hoot & he manages to get into plenty of trouble which he gets out of one way or another while entertaining the ladies. This book comes right after The Handle, but I read it way out of order & it was still very enjoyable. Both series are predictable & simple enough that or...

I couldn't tell you its name, but I did read the Parker caper which is the prequel to The Damsel. Grofield was one of the guys in on the heist, and at the end of the story he's recuperating from a gunshot wound in Mexico with a suitcase full of money.That's where this one starts.I didn't find Grofield quite as much fun to follow around as I typically do Parker, though there's a lot of the same sequence of problem solving, new problem, problem solving, new problem, etc. Grofield is flip and witty...

Whereas ‘The Handle’s is Stark clearly channelling Ian Fleming (or, at least, Broccoli/Saltzman), his follow up ‘The Damsel’ feels a lot more as if he’s been flicking through Leslie Charteris. We have here a professional thief in a Latin American country, a beautiful lady in distress, various less than bright hoods and a revolution that our hero has to stop. It’s like one of those post-thirties Saint novels where Templar gets out his passport and stretches his international legs.I said in my rev...

I'm a fan of Stark's (Donald E. Westlake's) Parker novels. They are what I call a sort-of guilty pleasure, the "bad guy" with whom you can sympathize...or at least enjoy his story. Parker is NOT a nice guy. However in reading his adventures you may have encountered Alan Grofield...he's a different story.You can like this guy. Here Grofield meets a "Damsel" who leads (drags ?) him into an adventure (or series of adventures) risking his life...and his ill-gotten gains (see his working relationship...

PROTAGONIST: Alan GrofieldSETTING: MexicoSERIES: #1RATING: 3.5WHY: As professional actor and part-time thief Alan Grofield is sitting in his hotel room with a suitcase full of money when a woman comes in through his window. Ellen Marie Fitzgerald tells a story about needing to get to Acapulco to prevent a political assassination. Involved are presidential hopeful and the governor of Pennsylvania, Luke Harrison, and a banana republic dictator. Grofield is very clever about eluding the people who

Actor Alan Grofield, a supporting character in the Parker series, gets the lead in this book which is set right after the events of The Handle. While this was in no means a bad book, it just was not quite up to the standards of the Parker books. Listened to the audio version which was narrated by R.C. Bray who gave a very good performance.

2.5 stars - if Goodreads had this option.This is the first in a spin-off short series of books with character Alan Grosfield as the main character. Grosfield is a regular character in many of the Richard Stark/Donald E. Westlake Parker series - an actor/thief, humorous ladies man. I liked the bantering humor in this book, but found the plot a bit dull. And fictitious leaders of made up countries generally don't, in my opinion, work all that well in books like this - too fairy-tale-ish a feel ("o...

Grofield stops an AssassinationReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (May 2013) of the Macmillan paperback original (1967)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 and their spinoff series, the Grofield novels. The Parkers are a hardboiled noir series but the Grofields have more of a lighter touch, often with humorous banter.In The...

The first novel starring Grofield, Parker's sometime accomplice, could have been a Parker novel, but only up to a point. The Damsel picks up with Grofield right where The Handle, the eighth Parker novel, left him, and the opening is similar to the second and third Parker novels: Grofield is minding his own business in a hotel room when the title character invades through a window. She is on the run, we soon learn, from people who are trying to prevent her from making it to Acapulco in time to wa...

Grofield, the charming actor-slash-thief of Richard Stark's Parker books gets his own spin-off series! Be careful now, all you fans of heist stories: this book isn't one of them. This novel picks up right where The Handle left off. The plot is okay, nothing spectacular, and certainly lighter in tone than Stark's Parker books. This novel is an easy read, if a bit longer than the Parker books up to that point.Not bad at all, though a far cry from Stark's better works. Still, I'll be reading the ot...

Oh boy. Well, after nine great novels, Stark/Westlake finally struck out with the first book of the Grofield series. I like the character Grofield, but he doesn't hold my interest like Parker does. Even worse, the plot wasn't as tightly woven as the previous Parker novels, so I was left just trying to make my way through the final third of the book. Part Three was just a dreadful collection of character sketches, with poorly conceived "types" being introduced for the first time in the novel only...

This book wasn't the easiest to find but I'm really glad I did. I heard that some fans of Stark's Parker novels don't like the Grofield books nearly as much. I enjoyed this as much if not more than any of the Parkers that I have read. Parker is a great character but Grofield is so much more relatable. A lot of this book is Grofield traveling with a women he meets. They have interesting conversations. Parker's refusal to engage in any small talk would be a problem in this situation. (I can't even...

My first book by Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark. Westlake has always been one my favorite authors,especially the Dortmunder series! I am looking forward to reading the Parker books by Stark.

Alan Grofield is a part of Richard Stark's Parker Universe, an actor who supplements his income by working as a thief. This novel, in fact, is a direct sequel to the Parker novel "The Handle," in which Parker and Grofield were part of a team robbing an island casino. That novel ended with Grofield recovering from a gun shot wound in Mexico City, with his take from the robbery in a suitcase."The Damsel" picks up when a lady, escaping from a trio of hired thugs, climbs through Grofield's hotel win...

As a character, Grofield is head and shoulders more interesting than Parker. Less of a strict audience cypher and more of an attempt at actual traits and attributes. The rest is interchangeable, but it's remarkable to see just how much that adds to the equation.

A really fun read. Following on from a Parker novel from Grofield's perspective, which means a bit of extra flair and drama plus soundtracks for action scenes as Grofield turns everything into a movie in his head.

(3.5 stars if I could give half stars.)Stark (aka Donald Westlake) is best known for his 'Parker' novels. 'The Damsel' is the first of four he wrote featuring Alan Grofield, one of Parker's occasional partners in crime.The action picks up after the events of 'The Handle.' Grofield is recuperating from a gunshot in Mexico when he meets up with a young American woman being pursued by generic thugs. They escape, he eventually gets her to explain her situation, and he tries to come up with a plan to...

I love Alan Grofield and am always delighted when he turns up in a Parker novel. Giving him his own book here, after the hijinks of The Handle, seemed like fertile territory, but what we get is a pretty run-of-the-mill "couple on the run" yarn. The tone of the book definitely takes its cue from the personality of Grofield, who is more breezy and care-free than the cold, brutal Parker. I guess this is as it should be, but the sense of urgency, along with many other qualities of the Parker novels,...

This is an atypical Stark. It's one of the few about Grofield rather than Parker, and it's not about a heist but rather more of an action/adventure story about a plot to murder a South American dictator. Grofield, wounded in Mexico, rather improbably gets tangled up (in more ways than one) with the nubile eponymous young thing as she tries to warn the general while being pursued by thugs. Follows the typical Stark book structure, effectively enough. There's some delightfully cold violence, thoug...

It's great, getting to read that spare, trademark Stark style again. But...sad as I am to say it, Grofield's not nearly so magnetic on his own as he is in the Parker books (at least in this one). It was a fun adventure, but man, I wanted another heist out of this one! And he didn't try to steal anything, which was too bad. But still, fun stuff, and Stark's prose carries the narrative along effectively.

Grofield wasn't as funny as i expected in this book but he was interesting enough to carry the book well for me. A weird little book, at times it was a bit hard-boiled,gritty and others it was typically Westlake comic crime. Not one of DEW strongest books but it was good enough to enjoy the ride.

To be honest, I came across this book after searching an online bookstore with key word "lemon" This book is the first in a four book series with the forth being "Lemons Never Lie" The books were written in the late 60's and I enjoyed the visit back to the culture of that day and the quick read that kept me interested to the end.

For those of you who enjoy Stark's (Donald Westlake) writing, the first of his four novels featuring Parker's partner in crime Grofield is sure to please. In fact, I strongly recommend Westlake's Parker Series for anyone who just appreciates fiction in general. He was one of the greats.

My first Westlake book but already I feel that we're going to have a LONG relationship! Face paced, and has a slight tinge of dark humor. A quick entertaining read. Recommended.

Good book, but I did miss Parker. Of course, Parker would never have put up with all this crap. He would have just put an end to it in the first chapter. Grofield is much more accommodating.

4* This is a crime novel, but my goodness, it's funny as heck. I really enjoyed this entertainment.