The Outfit has sent a hitman after Parker in Florida, just a few weeks after the events of the last book came to a close. Synopsis follows–spoilers abound.įor the first time in a Parker novel, we join the proceedings right in the middle of a scene of violence.
THE GREATEST PENGUIN HEIST OF ALL TIME CONTROLS MOVIE
But still one of only four Parker novels to get turned into a movie which I’m less impressed with than some, and which I’ll review eventually, but not now. Someday I’ll work up my own Parker timeline (that should be fun), but for now, let’s concentrate on the book at hand, which is one of the most pivotal in the series–and probably not anyone’s personal favorite (somebody wants to tell me I’m wrong there, pipe up). And maybe some were never really kids to start with. Some folks just mature faster than others. Calvin Graham joined the navy at 12, and it took the brass a long time to find him out. In The Outfit, we find out Parker served in WWII from 1942-44 (and was given a bad conduct discharge for black-marketeering), which would make him remarkably young when he joined up, but not impossibly so. The books have an odd sense of time, but they do exist within it. Parker gets called an ageless character, but I don’t think he ever was. That may have been the ideal, but it didn’t always work out that way. Later, when the novels weren’t being published so close together, there would be more of a pause between jobs, and less need to refer to earlier novels via brief footnotes, but in the early days, Westlake had to justify Parker being active all the time, even though we were told in The Hunter that he only pulled one heist a year. The fifth novel was the first true standalone–ie, the first that didn’t either end on some kind of unresolved note or resolve something from an earlier book–but there was still this sense of a continuing story–as if all the books were just chapters in one long sprawling epic (that never truly ended). He took a temporary break from that war in his second outing, then finished it in his third–but by then, a new complication had cropped up, requiring Parker to move immediately to another job in book four. He’d done that with The Hunter, finishing Mal’s story two thirds of the way through, then getting Parker started on his war with the syndicate, which was just heating up by the end.
The Parker novels were fairly serialized, particularly in the beginning (and towards the end), and writing in his new Stark modality, Westlake developed a neat little trick to keep readers on the hook–he’d finish a particular story arc in one book, then start a new one in that same book, to pull you into the next one. All right, he was a criminal, but everybody was more or less dishonest, particularly in business. Bronson thought of himself as a businessman. He thought of himself exactly as Quill had described it. “What’s that got to do with anything, Quill?” There was an undertone of warning in Bronson’s voice. They know the corporation they work for engages in illegal activities, but they think what-the-hell, every corporation these days does, from tax-dodging through price-fixing to government bribing.” They have an employer they pay income tax they come under Social Security they own their own homes and cars they work in local industry. “What do you mean, they don’t think they’re crooks?” “Hold on.” Bronson held up his own hand, fingers splayed like a traffic cop’s.
0 kommentar(er)
