Books: Slayground By Richard Stark (1971)

“The Wheel of Fortune turned and Parker figured his number had finally come up. An armored car heist had gone sour. His partners were dead or dying. He had escaped with the loot, but holing up in a deserted amusement park with only one exit had turned into a fatal mistake. Now the local mob and a couple of crooked cops were on their way in after the money...and the odds were against Parker getting out with his life. But Parker always did like to play the long shots. Besides, he knew all the ways there were to kill: with his gun...with his knife...with his own bare hands. So the hunter becomes prey. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker realizes one miscalculation will end his career. So he’s low on bullets—but, as anyone who’s crossed his path knows, that definitely doesn’t mean he’s defenseless.”

Certainly not a great Parker novel, or one with an even probable plot, but as I read, its clear Stark/Westlake was doing his version of the Most Dangerous Game –TV shows and movies have been doing this variation of the tale, so why not Parker? There are a few things that bothered me, though, like whole idea of getting him trapped in an amusement park to begin with (with the local hoods commenting that this was a “locked-room mystery”), but if you are doing a variation on Richard Connell's short story, this can make sense? part of it seems dubious, that like no one around the park would miss all the action going on there –it is winter, the park is closed up, so when lights and music get turned on, won’t some investigate it? Then again, this town is corrupt, with dirty cops and a mob boss who gets around on a golf cart. Then there is Parker going all Home Alone, as he sets bobby traps for the hoods, which is doing something we’ve never had him do before. Also, did amusement parks in the late 60s or early 70s actually sell real hunting knives as a souvenir?

Interesting, the book ends with no resolution and I guess this tale with be revisited in the next book, or the one after it.

Slayground does show Parker is more human, insomuch as he gets injured and has deal with that; a nice touch. But Westlake also paints him as the cleverest man alive and those hoods, the mob boss, and the dirty cops are dumb as a box of hair. This was something he did in the Dortmunder novels as well. Surprisingly, there is little in the way of continuity references (the last book was full of them), but for longtime readers, we get a brief cameo appearance of Alan Grofield, who appeared in The Score and The Handle (and who by the time this book was published, had appeared in his own spin-off series). So in the end, this 14^th volume in the series is definitely a stand-alone-tale.

There was a very loose British adaptation of Slayground done in 1983, which was directed by Terry Bedford. It starred Peter Coyote, Mel Smith, and Billie Whitelaw.