The Hunter

Richard Stark

Parker is the kind of guy who, if you're forced into contact with him, you want him on your side. The quintessential antihero, he's someone you feel soiled for identifying with, but can't help yourself.

Richard Stark, alias Donald E. Westlake, wanted to create a character he could use to sell a book a bit more hard-boiled than the stuff he'd been writing, and Parker was the result. The Hunter, the first Parker novel, turned out to be such a success that he;s had sixteen more books written about him. But it's the first one everyone knows, thanks in no small part to two film adaptations, the most recent of which is 1999's Payback, with Mel Gibson as the good/bad guy.

The plot: Parker is back in New York after his wife and an associate double-crossed him on a big job. He wants revenge. He also wants his share of the take.

Yes, that's the entire plot. Seems kind of thin, right? Not if you're Donald E. Westlake, one of the undisputed masters of the twentieth-century American mystery. The book plays out like your typical revenge storyline, with most of your typical characters, and to be fair there's a lot of stereotype writ large here. This is not deathless literature by any means. What it is, however, is good old-fashioned fast-paced meaty writing. Westlake-- erm, Stark-- knows how to keep the pages turning, his characters are well-drawn enough to be distinct from one another, and everything comes to an ending that is, if not happy, a resounding success.

The hardboiled mystery/thriller is the testosterone-fueled version of the romance novel, and Richard Stark does it better than most. Sure, it's empty calories, but that's part of what makes it so good.