Books: The Dame By Richard Stark (1969)

“Alan Grofield, still in the arms of Elly, but preparing to return to the United States to see his wife, when receives a message asking him to go to Puerto Rico as a favor to a friend to help out a woman in distress. Curious, Grofield flies to Puerto Rico and meets the woman and her several houseguests at an isolated mansion out in the countryside. Grofield and the lady immediately annoy each other and he decides not to take the job. However, before he can leave someone in the house is murdered. It's clear that the killer must have either been a guest or a member of the staff, and Grofield is everyone's number one suspect. Grofield becomes suspect number one, but to clear his name, he relunctantly assumes the role of detective. But can he amuse the husband of the murdered woman –a crime boss himself- until he can discover who killed her?”

The Dame is the second of Westlake’s four pseudonymous Parker spin-off novels starring actor-turned-thief Alan Grofield, and follows on almost directly from the first book, The Damsel. The premise is a bit wobbly and vague here. While Grofield is more wittier and less violent than Parker, he still is a smart man and I began to wonder why he would take this job –he still has his take of the money from his recent adventure with Parker (see The Handle)- mostly because that gig set him up with enough cash for a year or more. So why go to Puerto Rico to begin with? Thus it becomes a straight whodunit with plot contrivances and some action thrown in to remind readers that Donald E. Westlake is writing under his hard-broiled noir nom de plume of Richard Stark.

And sort of like The Damsel, Grofield no longer has some of the quirks Westlake created for him in his appearances in the Parker books, which adds to the boring murder mystery. Another word, some of his wittiness has been diluted, making The Dame sit awkwardly between two writing genre styles, neither tough, smart or violent enough to be a good Parker novel nor funny enough to be a good Westlake caper.

Still, it is Westlake and book does have some redeeming values –the murder mystery is thin, but him playing detective and asking questions does sparkle. Maybe it’s only for those who consider themselves a Parker completists –which I’m not, but these books are still better written than most other crime novels of the modern age.

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.