Books: The Handle By Richard Stark (1966)

"The Baron ran a gambling island off the Texas coast in the Gulf’s blue waters. To Parker, it was just a floating crap game with class. To the Big Boys (the Oufit), it was competition they couldn’t stomach. They wanted a specialist to rob the Baron blind, pluck him like a chicken, and burn this paradise island into the sea. That’s why they sent for Parker. His price was 200 grand in cash and Crystal — a beautiful little blonde. So the pot was sweet, but the heist soon had so many twists it smelled like a brand-new lemon — and Parker knew the line between success and failure on this score would be exactly the length of the barrel of a .38."

Here's a nice throwback –plus an old story trope- where one group of morally corrupt mobsters needs the help of a former associate, a sociopathic anti-hero who seemly is just a few steps better than them in moral department, to help them crush the competition. We’ve seen this set-up before, but it’s more typically done with the villain and the hero of the story joining forces to defeat a third party. Of course, with Parker, you can’t describe him as a hero, just a killer/thief who has a set of rules which he tries to stick to, but because he continues to get caught up in all these over-the-top capers, his rules sometimes are set aside. Alan Grofield, the often funny actor turned thief, returns for The Handle. While the character does get a four-book spin-off, it would’ve been nice had Stark/Westlake kept the character around to interact with Parker more in later novels. This series does, at times, need some gallows humor. But beyond one more cameo appearance in 1971’s Slayground (which was mirrored in the third Grofield novel, 1969’s The Blackbird), the character never appears again in a Parker novel, though he gets a mention in 1974’s Butcher’s Moon.

Anyways, this eighth title resembles The Score, with another ambitious heist that devolves into violence and destruction. The novel,  like all Parker books, is good, but there’s a bit too much coincidence here and people get shot and survive way too often. And Stark gives us the wonderful Crystal, but she vanishes completely –she was very much a different girl altogether. Nevertheless, it’s still a fun book with a desperate Parker in fine form.