"The statue wore white and grieved. Parker wasn’t interested
in its sentimental value. The thief cared more about retrieving a certain gun
that came with it, the one he had used in a previous crime that could
incriminate him. By the time Parker comes face to face with the 16-inch-tall
alabaster figurine called The Mourner, he knows that stealing it for a rich man
and his beautiful, amoral daughter is the least of his worries. New players are
coming in every minute, from strutting syndicate boys to a fat man with a heavy
accent who is lighter on his feet than he looks. Now in a deadly, treacherous
endgame, Parker will find out who intends to bury whom — and why no one will be
crying over his grave."
The Mourner is a prime example of
Stark/Westlake’s world blurring. The details of plot are intricate, but I could
see (again, because I started the Dortmunder titles before Parker, who came
first) where the tale could diverge into two different worlds. However, the
difference between these two worlds is the nihilistic approach Westlake takes
with Parker. After four books, I get the sense that each adventure is happening
weeks or just a few months later. This type of lifestyle Parker is living is
dangerous and while he seems okay with it, I also get a sense that Parker likes
it too much to give it all up –even if he scored a huge win.
Then again it is only now that I’m catching onto the fact that the
Parker books are pretty –and maybe, unintentionally- funny. Parker is
constantly interacting with people who want to be around him, want to work with
him, want his attention, want to talk to him, and want to hire him—and he just
wants to be left alone. He wants to plan his job, do the job, not get double
crossed, and then go off alone to live off his take.
Of course, that never happens, and that’s pretty funny.
Dortmunder, in many ways, is the same way. Except, of course, Westlake deliberately made Dortmunder funny. I
don’t know if Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, intended to make Parker’s
world this humorous.
As
noted in The Outfit review, there seemed to be end to an arc that started in
The Hunter and continued in The Man with the Getaway Face, with Parker having
now settled his issues with the crime syndicate. The Mourner reads like a
stand-alone tale (though the thread of this “episode” was seeded in the
previous book), and features no new information on his past. One could read, I
guess this book, without having read the three previous. I’m not sure that’s a
great idea, but you could.
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