Books: The Seventh By Richard Stark (1965)

"The robbery was a piece of cake. The getaway was clean. And seven men were safely holed up in different places while Parker held all the cash - until the heat was off and each could collect his seventh to spend on booze or broads or dreams. Except this sweet heist turned sour. Somebody stole Parker's stash. Killed Parker's girl. And made Parker murderously mad. Now Parker's looking for the lowlife who did him dirty. The cops are looking for seven clever thieves. The killer is looking for a way to shoot Parker. And when hunters and hunted meet - some win, some lose, and some die"

At this point in my reading of the Parker novels, I have to reconcile my feelings about the violence and death that occur in this series. I’m not a huge fan of this type of genre where you end up rooting for a sociopath. It puzzles me why this subgenre does so well, because it’s such a ruthless universe (I cringed when Parker killed a 19 year-old hick in the last book). I will grant you the prose by Stark/Westlake is great, imaginative, and vivid, but Parker and his world is not one I want know or live in, and I guess it’s small victory that these novels are short (this ones the shortest so far) and not very complex. Finally, the title seems to be a bit meta or jokey as seven people pull off a heist, and they are supposed to get a split, a seventh of the total take, but it's also probably intentionally named as well, as this is also Stark’s seventh Parker book.

In the end, The Seventh is as ruthless and horrible as one might expect with men who kill like you and I breath. Maybe I need to take a break from this nihilistic world and get back to goofy universe of John Dortmunder?

Note:

There was a film adaptation of The Seventh, released in 1968 as The Split which starred Jim Brown (as Parker, but named McClain here), Diahann Carroll, Julie Harris, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, Donald Sutherland, and Gene Hackman. The music was scored by Quincy Jones and was notable for being the first film with an R rating. While Jim Brown’s casting in the lead role was revolutionary at the time (lets also note the 1967 French-made version of The Score turned Parker into a woman), the film performed poorly both at the box office and in reviews. Interestingly, this would’ve been a follow up to Point Blank, which was based on Richard Stark’s first Parker book, The Hunter. Lee Marvin, who starred in that film as Parker (named Walker in it) was not available to do this film. Producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff first wanted Steve McQueen for The Split, but when he went off to do Bullit instead, they chose Brown, who they had worked with before and who was (conveniently?) on contract at MGM.

In the book, the impressive set-up and execution to steal the cash is only about 25% of the book, the other 75% focuses on the who killed Ellen and who stole the money; in the film (which I saw a few months ago on TMC) 75% of the film focuses on the heist –which makes it sort run-of-the-mill thriller. The film plot varies in other aspects as well, but it’s got a fairly good score by Jones; Jim Brown and (especially) Diahann Carroll, who does much with what they gave her, are pretty great –but it’s not worth going out of your way to see it.