“Parker’s run of bad luck (the
four novels spanning from The Sour Lemon
Score to Plunder Squad) persists
as the story Butcher’s Moon opens. A
botched jewelry store job leaves him out of pocket and in dire need of cash, so
he calls up Alan Grofield, his long-time associate and actor-turned-thief, with
whom he worked on the heist at the start of Slayground—a heist that resulted in Grofield being hospitalized and
Parker abandoning a stashed bag of dough in an amusement park in the Midwest
city of Tyler, Indiana. After 2 years and a few adventures, Grofield is
similarly on his uppers, his summer stock theater in Mead Grove, Indiana
continuing to drain his resources and leaving him without a pot to piss in. So
when Parker suggests they head to Tyler to retrieve their loot, Grofield
readily accepts. Not surprisingly, once they arrive in Tyler and search Fun
Island, there’s no trace of the money, so he and Grofield make a nuisance of
themselves with the local Outfit (i.e. Mob) operation in an effort to track
down the boodle. Adolf Lozini, the Mafia boss who led the hunt for Parker
through Fun Island in Slayground, is still in
charge—but only just. There’s a coup d’état brewing, and the last thing the
usurpers need is Parker and Grofield making things more difficult. But
successfully and violently muddy the waters they do, until Grofield is shot and
then held hostage and Parker has to resort to calling in help his list of other
past associates, among them Handy McKay from, Stan Devers, and Ed Mackey, to carry
out a series of jobs on Outfit enterprises in and around Tyler before hitting
the Outfit men themselves.”
A lot of Butcher’s Moon reads like a finale, that after sixteen novels and a dozen year,
Parker was going out in style. But according to Donald E. Westlake, this was
not intended to be the last book; it just ended being that way. Over the
twenty-three year gap between this novel and Parker’s Comeback return in 1997, Westlake said many things, including the
idea that even by 1974, stealing large amounts of cash from banks,
entertainment venues, local stores and other places was drying up due to few
things, the credit card boom, and money being transferred electronically –so no
need to have large amounts of loose cash on hand. He did tell the New York
Times back in 1997 that by “1974, Richard Stark just up and disappeared. He did
a fade. Periodically, in the ensuing years, I tried to summon that persona, to
write like him, to be him for just a while, but every single time I failed.
What appeared on the paper was stiff, full of lumps, a poor imitation, a
pastiche. Though successful, though well liked and well paid, Richard Stark had
simply downed tools. For, I thought, ever.”
But for some diehard Richard
Stark/Donald Westlake fans, this seemed not so realistic take, as website The
Westlake Review pointed out in 2015: “Westlake had established Dortmunder as a
series character, and we can speculate that Westlake didn’t want to be spending
most of his time working out variations on what he’d done before, which is what
franchise fiction tends to be, no matter how well written and original.” Butcher’s Moon was also “the
twenty-first and final book Westlake published at Random House (and the first
Parker novel released in hardcover), ending what has to be considered his most
seminal and productive stint at any one publisher–all of his 60’s novels under
his own name, plus a short story collection, all five of the Mitchell Tobin
mysteries of Tucker Coe, and finally the last four Parker novels. It was at
Random House that Westlake had truly matured as a writer, had made his
reputation as a crime novelist (alternately dark and comical), and had
benefited greatly from the editing savvy of Lee Wright, one of the most
influential figures in the mystery field at that time. Did Westlake stop
working with his first major publisher because he wanted to stop writing Parker
novels for a while, or did he stop writing Parker novels for a while because
Random House didn’t want any more? Was it a four book deal that expired
and was not renewed? Is that why this book feels like a planned
conclusion to the entire saga to date? Because that is precisely what it
does feel like. A saga drawing to a close, with a vengeance.”
Butcher’s Moon also reintroduces characters
from most its previous fifteen books in a tale that is (a first for
Westlake/Stark) a direct sequel to a previous novel. But also gives the
long-time reader an Easter Egg of sorts or just someone who understood
continuity, by also completing a subplot introduced in the very first book in
the series, The Hunter back in 1962.
“So Parker cheerfully—or, more accurately, dourly—murders his way through
Butcher’s Moon, gunning down one man on a sidewalk just to send a message and
visiting an apocalyptic vengeance on the hapless mobsters at the close of the
book,” noted the Westlake Review.
Even though this would be the
last Parker book for twenty-three years, it
also comes across like a refreshing new take for our favorite anti-hero, as
Stark/Westlake smartly changes up the format. First off, it runs 55 chapters, over
three hundred pages, fully twice the length of many of the earlier books (more
on this later). He also abandons the usual four part structure in favor of a
continuous linear narrative. He also makes Parker less anonymous, as he tells
Lozini to contact certain people who will tell him what Parker is capable of
when someone gets in the way of his money.
These changes may have upset
some long-time readers, but it’s clear that Westlake would not be put off by
their complaining. There is also a great meta moment, as well, when Parker has
assembled a large team to take on the Mob and get Grofield back. It could be
Westlake himself talking to his long-time faithful readers that Parker can
evolve. So it comes to Handy McKay, who knows how Parker works, who is a bit
ambivalent about his latest plan, to ponder why go through this for one man.
These guys, they know the risk, they know this could be their last job; they
know they’ll be left behind if their shot or caught by the police. “What
happens to him is up to him,” Handy says bluntly.
“I
don’t care. I don’t care if it’s like me or not. These people nailed my foot to
the floor, I’m going round in circles, I’m not getting anywhere. When was it
like me to take lumps and just walk away? I’d like to burn this city to the
ground, I’d like to empty it right down to the basements. And I don’t want to
talk about it anymore, I want to do it. You’re in, Handy, or you’re out. I told
you the setup, I told you what I want, I told you what you’ll get for it. Give
me a yes or a no.”
The question now is will I
read more of these books? Between 1997 and his death on New Years Eve 2008, Westlake
wrote eight more Parker novels (the last one was published posthumously in 2009).
Most diehard Westlake readers would, but there is a caveat. As the 70’s became
the 80’s, most of his books started appearing in hardcover first –he reached
the pinnacle a lot of writers of the paperback era always wanted. But to meet
the costs of this format, it meant that the page count needed to increase. What
made the early paperback Parker’s great, and even the early Dortmunder’s, along
with his multiple stand-alone titles, was by keeping them short and to the
point, the books were slim, with a lot of superfluous material excised during
rewrites (see my take on Forever and a
Death). But to justify the hardcover costs, it forced Westlake to write
much longer books, with tales often going off in tangents that slowed the pace
down, especially in the later Dortmunder tales. They were no longer lean, mean
machines. They’re still great tales, but they often suffered because he had
develop more characters, more subplots, more action (or comedic) set pieces.
I may read Comeback, but for
now, my tour with Parker might be finished.
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