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    Breakout: A Parker Novel
    Unavailable
    Breakout: A Parker Novel
    Unavailable
    Breakout: A Parker Novel
    Ebook260 pages4 hours

    Breakout: A Parker Novel

    By Richard Stark and Chris Holm

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Together at last. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, Donald E. Westlake, one of the greats of crime fiction, wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hard-boiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists and a code all his own. With the publication of the last four Parker novels Westlake wrote—Breakout, Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot, and Dirty Money—the University of Chicago Press pulls the ultimate score: for the first time ever, the entire Parker series will be available from a single publisher.
     
    With Parker locked up and about to be unmasked, Breakout follows his Houdini-like escape from prison with a team of convicts. But when a new heist and new dangers—con artists, snitches, busybodies, eccentrics, and cops—loom among the dark alleys and old stone buildings of the big city to which they’ve fled, Parker soon learns that not all prisons have bars.
     
    Featuring new forewords by Chris Holm, Duane Swierczynski, and Laura Lippman—celebrated crime writers, all—these masterworks of noir are the capstone to an extraordinary literary run that will leave you craving more. Written over the course of fifty years, the Parker novels are pure artistry, adrenaline, and logic both brutal and brilliant. Join Parker on his jobs and read them all again or for the first time. Just don’t talk to the law.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateSep 8, 2017
    ISBN9780226508344
    Unavailable
    Breakout: A Parker Novel

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    Reviews for Breakout

    4/5

    74 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Well, this isn't my favorite Parker novel of all time, but it is a Parker novel, so I liked it! The title says it all "Breakout", and in fact there are three breakouts in here! Out of prison, out of a botched job, and out of the whole dang thing! Parker teams up with Mackey and Williams in all 3 and they do it as only they can! If you like Parker, you'll like this book!
    • 5/5
      If these Parker novels weren't so well written I wouldn't go to the trouble of suspending my morals and ethics for however long it takes to read one of these stories.. but they are very well written! In this one Parker finds himself incarcerated and desperate to escape before the officials find out he's not who they thought they had locked up! It's out of and back into one compromising situation after another as Parker takes his best shot at avoiding serious hard time!
    • 4/5
      Another fantastic Parker book. He gets caught in the opening chapter and has to breakout of jail thereafter. Cold-blooded as ever, he eventually make it back to Claire with little to show for his efforts.
    • 4/5
      Great book from start to finish. The title actually refers to several "breakouts" in the book. Stark/Westlake does a great job of keeping the plot moving.
    • 4/5
      Another classic Richard Stark, a.k.a. Donald Westlake, or vice versa if you prefer. Again featuring that completely amoral thief, Parker, as usual, several things go wrong with the caper forcing Parker to extricate himself from a mess. Unusually, Parker finds himself in prison (again due to a colleague’s carelessness and his own use of a name that had a record from another state) and must breakout. This he and a couple of colleagues accomplish but then he reluctantly becomes involved in another theft only to again have things go terribly wrong (this hardly qualifies as a spoiler since it’s part of the formula.)

      Their entrance into the armory and attempted exit is a brilliant example of Westlake’s descriptive writing making this one of the best of the Parker novels. The only problem with reading these novels is that you realize they inevitably come to an end; there is no endless supply.
    • 3/5
      For some reason, I thought this was the “real life” author that Stephen King was referencing when he wrote the character George Stark in The Dark Half. But it’s not. At least I don’t think so. And Richard Stark is the pseudonym for yet another writer.Overall, this wasn’t bad at all. He has a tight, spare style that is stripped down and bare but yet conveys so much detail and atmosphere. His style is like a film noir – mostly action with a hint of history. Fast-paced, too. With plenty of villains. It seemed to have no details of the escape or the heist, but yet somehow enough was explained for me to understand. He doesn’t dwell on details – he moves things along very quickly.Parker escapes from Stoneveldt with the help of his outside buddy who does some background checking on his fellow inmates. He comes up with a few who are looking at long stretches of time, have their shit together and aren’t assholes. They make it but the succeeding heist goes wrong and they are trapped in a high-security building with no way out. After a lot of work and anxious hours, they get out of there.Meanwhile, Parker’s outside man’s girlfriend is turned into the police for listing a false name on her gym membership. She only joined the gym because it was in the same building as the heist target. Somehow she’s held on this and connected to the band that burst out of there. The same lawyer (a friend of Parker’s sometime girlfriend, Claire) who helped Parker in jail now helps her and eventually they turn her loose. After that they need to get away from the cops and out of town. One of the jailbreakers turns into an incredibly loyal guy and helps them out of a couple of tight spots. In the very end, Parker hooks up with Claire in her apartment and we’re done. I’d read another.