Books: The Man with the Getaway Face By Richard Stark (1963)

“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.