“In New York there is a contract on his life. In Nebraska, there
is an unscrupulous plastic surgeon. After the events of The Hunter, Parker ends
up in the Midwest getting a new face to hide himself from The Outfit. But he is
now faced (no pun intended) with dwindling funds, so he gets involved with a
sketchy armored car robbery in New Jersey with two former acquaintances, Skimm
and Handy McKay. While he scores hid biggest haul, there is a catch (well,
two). The first is the original planner of the heist, a dangerous woman named
Alma (and Skimm’s girlfriend). Both Parker and McKay figure out that Alma is
going to betray them. The second involves the murder of the Doctor Adler, the
surgeon who altered Parker’s face (along with others). Stubbs, Adler’s chauffer,
believes it to be one of three men who could’ve killed the doctor, and sets off
to New Jersey in hopes of finding out if Parker was the one, because if he can’t,
he’s willing to rat out Parker to The Outfit”
Parker is a no nonsense character
that always does what is necessary and never deals from a position of weakness.
Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, has created an amoral character
who you sort of root for. He is a killer, he is a thief, he plans out his hits
with a laser focus, but finds that something always upsets the apple cart.
Unlike Westlake’s other recurring character, John Dortmunder, the Parker tales
are more brutal, less humorous, but still entertaining. The Man with the Getaway
Face is well written, tightly plotted, with some twists and surprises.
This second book is not as
thrilling as The Hunter (which had a more beginning, middle, and an end aspect)
as Stark/Westlake takes up a lot of time describing the minutiae of the heist
and is clearly laying the ground work for the third book. However, having read
the Dortmunder books first, I can almost see the divulging point here from the
serious world of Parker and John Dortmunder’s comic bad luck (though
that was nearly a decade away when this book was released) world during the
planning stage of the heist. There is a fine the line here between Parker
and Dortmunder and it amuses me to see that (unconsciously, obviously) Westlake was
starting to lay the ground work for his other popular series.
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