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    Comeback: A Parker Novel
    Comeback: A Parker Novel
    Comeback: A Parker Novel
    Ebook259 pages3 hours

    Comeback: A Parker Novel

    By Richard Stark and Lawrence Block

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    About this ebook

    After the bloodbath of Butcher’s Moon, the action-filled blowout Parker adventure, Donald Westlake said, "Richard Stark proved to me that he had a life of his own by simply disappearing. He was gone." And for nearly twenty-five years, he stayed away, while readers waited.
     
    But nothing bad is truly gone forever, and Parker’s as bad as they come. According to Westlake, one day in 1997, “suddenly, he came back from the dead, with a chalky prison pallor”—and the resulting novel, Comeback, showed that neither Stark nor Parker had lost a single step. Knocking over a highly lucrative religious revival show, Parker reminds us that not all criminals don ski masks—some prefer to hide behind the wings of fallen angels.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2011
    ISBN9780226772998
    Comeback: A Parker Novel

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    Reviews for Comeback

    4/5

    96 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Once Donald Westlake decided to bring back Richard Stark and Parker after twenty some-odd years, he wisely also brought back everything that made the series so beloved--all of it, in one outing. A unique theft and its planning and execution, interesting cohorts, a betrayal, the avoiding and conning of the police, the recovery of stolen (restolen?) loot, and the dealing (permanently) with those still foolish enough to cross Parker. Sometimes it works to give the reader exactly what they expect. A fine welcome back.
    • 5/5
      I don't like Parker. Nobody likes Parker. Yet we are all as addicted to reading about him as he is to crime. 'Comeback', another brilliant read from Richard Stark.
    • 3/5
      Parker is such an unlikeable character that Stark has to keep surrounding him with even less likable characters so one can't read too many of these in a row. The plot is clever.
    • 5/5
      A great book i just wanted to carry on reading till the end
    • 4/5
      Parker returns after a hiatus over 20 years in which he has been living with his girlfriend beside a New Jersey lake. When old partners invite him to rob a TV evangelist's road show, he comes out of retirement. The details of the heist are all carefully planned but a series of unrelated small mistakes culminate in catastrophe from which Parker escapes through his quick wit and utter lack of compunction. Stark/Westlake has picked up his old character with all the panache he ever had. It is great to see the return of an old favourite in such fine fettle.
    • 5/5
      The first Parker novel I ever read. Has a relentless pace and loads of seedy characters tripping over each other. Easy to picture it all in your head like a 70s crime thriller. Highly recommended for anyone who hasn't read a Parker novel before.
    • 4/5
      Another great Richard Stark/Donald Westlake Parker story. The following of different story lines was handled good, but whenever Parker wasn't involved, the plot got a lot less interesting.
    • 4/5
      Stealing a holy- roller’s Christian crusade money, now that is a plan I can get behind! For Parker and his ‘string’, that’s what they do in this one!Chapters 10 and 11 are awesome! Parker’s cool confidence is what I love about these books! And then he takes out 5 guys in 40 seconds - unarmed! (well, except for a metal drawer!) Loved it! I also enjoyed the big showdown between Parker and Liss. Man, why in the heck would you ever even try to double-cross Parker? Why, why, why?
    • 4/5
      If you like crime fiction, it is a guarantee that you will go bonkers over “Comeback,” the 17th Parker novel, published in 1997 after a 23 year hiatus following “Butcher’s Moon” in 1974. It is tightly written, professionally engineered masterpiece of crime fiction. Whatever rough edges could be found in the original Parker novels written in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, those edges are gone. This is a smoothly-written, master-crafted work of art. If you have not read any Parker novels before, be forewarned that it is one of the most addictive things ever invented. You will want to pick up one Parker novel just as soon as you finish the last one. It’s simply crazy the way it works.
      Parker in this one is working with Ed and Brenda Mackey and George Liss and they have a whopper of a stunt to pull off. The Right Reverend William Archibald is taking his prayer show on the road across America from stadium to stadium. The sinners on their true path to forgiveness each are contributing twenty dollars in cash at the door plus more as the pot is passed around. When the arena is filled, the dollars just add up big, estimated at about $400,000. “Even in a world of electronic cash transfers and credit cards and money floating in cyberspace, there were still heists out there, waiting to be collected.” There is an inside man part of the evangelism team, but he got involved while on parole and now he has soured seeing the man at the top collect and collect and collect. It is a smooth, flawless heist – well, almost flawless. The inside man is nervous and panicking. There is a falling out among thieves and a betrayal. There are others riding Parker’s coattails and waiting to pick off the loot.

      It is one hell of a story and you can add a few more to the list of unforgettable characters that Stark (Westlake) has dreamed up. It has a few points of view in addition to Parker’s. The reverend is hysterical, ensconced in his penthouse hotel suite with an ash-blonde “harlot” who was the only woman in the reverend’s experience “to overflow her birthday suit.” Tina “was a lush girl,” but “it was a lushness that could spill into overripeness.” The reverend’s other confidante is Dwayne, an ex-marine that ran security for these prayer events and was the reverend’s chief of staff. He is tasked with the smooth running of the William Archibald crusade and he applies his marines philosophy to the task: “Don’t ask why, only ask how.” The inside guy is Carmody and he is not built for this task. He is bent out of shape with a discouraged slope of his shoulders and a fatalistic half-grip of his hands. To Dwayne, this only means one thing: “A fellow bent on desertion.” Dwayne also describes another involved party as “Beetle Bailey without the comedy, a sad sack who would always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

      The story is also filled with sage advice such as that “Relaxed guys are harder to fool, but tensed-up guys are harder to read.”

      I am not sure how you decide which is the best of the Parker novels, but this one is right up there with the best.
    • 4/5
      Parker Returns After 23 YearsReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (April, 2013) of the Warner Books / Mysterious Press hardcover (1997)Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.Comeback finds Parker and a heist crew knocking over the box office receipts (all cash) from a shady evangelist's rally. Their inside man wants his share in order to do the actual good deeds which the scam evangelist is not doing. As almost always, one of the heisters gets greedy and soon the usual disarray follows with Parker trying to pick up the pieces.Comeback was the return of Westlake/Stark's antihero Parker character after a 23 year hiatus following the 16th book in the series Butcher's Moon (1974). There isn't any mention of Parker aging in the meantime so it is almost as if there was no hiatus at all.Narrator Keith Szarabjka does an excellent job in all voices in this audiobook edition. I had never previously read the Stark/Parker novels but became curious when they came up in my recent reading of The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Sept. 2020) by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager. Here is a (perhaps surprising) excerpt from their discussion with autho Amor Towles:Nancy: Do you read Lee Child?Amor: I know Lee. I had never read his books until I met him, but now I read them whenever they come out. I think some of the decisions he makes are ingenious.Jeff: Have you read the Parker books by Donald Westlake [writing as Richard Stark]?Amor: I think the Parker books are an extraordinary series.Jeff: They feel like a big influence on Reacher, right down to the name. Both Reacher and Parker have a singular focus on the task in front of them.Amor: But Parker is amoral. Reacher is just dangerous.Jeff: Right. Reacher doesn't have a conventional morality, but he has his own morality. Parker will do anything he has to do to achieve his goal.Amor: But to your point, Westlake's staccato style with its great twists at the end of the paragraphs, and his mesmerizing central character - these attributes are clearly shared by the Reacher books.The 24 Parker books are almost all available for free on Audible Plus, except for #21 & #22 which aren't available at all.Trivia and LinksThere is a brief plot summary of Comeback and of all the Parker books and adaptations at The Violent World of Parker website.Unlike many of the 2010-2013 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook editions which share the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009-2011 reprints, this audiobook DOES include the Foreword by author Lawrence Block.

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    Comeback - Richard Stark

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