Richard Stark: The Score (USA 2009)

From the Publisher:
You probably haven't ever noticed them. But they've noticed you. They notice everything. That's their job. Sitting quietly in a nondescript car outside a bank making note of the tellers' work habits, the positions of the security guards. Lagging a few car lengths behind the Brinks truck on its daily rounds. Surreptitiously jiggling the handle of an unmarked service door at the racetrack.

They're thieves. Heisters, to be precise. They're pros, and Parker is far and away the best of them. If you're planning a job, you want him in. Tough, smart, hardworking, and relentlessly focused on his trade, he is the heister's heister, the robber's robber, the heavy's heavy. You don't want to cross him, and you don't want to get in his way, because he'll stop at nothing to get what he's after.

Parker, the ruthless antihero of Richard Stark's eponymous mystery novels, is one of the most unforgettable characters in hardboiled noir. Lauded by critics for his taut realism, unapologetic amorality, and razor-sharp prose-style -- and adored by fans who turn each intoxicating page with increasing urgency -- Stark is a master of crime writing; his books as influential as any in the genre. The University of Chicago Press has embarked on a project to return the early volumes of this series to print for a new generation of readers to discover -- and become addicted to. This season's offerings include volumes 4-6 in the series: The Mourner, The Score, and The Jugger.

The Mourner is a story of convergence -- of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents. Next, Parker works with a group of professional con men in The Score on his biggest job yet -- robbing an entire town in North Dakota. In The Jugger, Parker travels to Nebraska to help out a geriatric safecracker who knows too many of his criminal secrets. By the time he arrives, the safecracker is dead and Parker's skeletons are on the verge of escaping from their closet -- unless Parker resorts to lethal measures.

Richard Stark: The Score. A Parker Novel. With a new Foreword by John Banville. University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 9780226771045 (May, 2009), 224 p., $14.00.

Richard Stark: The Score (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
GOING FOR THE KILL
There has never been a score like this: a dozen professional crooks armed and aimed toward a rich, remote North Dakota town. Working for a man named Edgars, Parker and his boys are going to drive into Copper Canyon, take down its police force, cut its lines of communication to the outside world, and then steal Copper Canyon blind: lock, stock, and barrel. How will it work? That's Parker's job, and his plan is practically flawless. Practically. Because while Parker can play people like a fiddle, use violence like a scalpel, and foresee every wrinkle in a job, he just can't know about the burning secret hiding in a man's heart - or the explosion it will ignite...

Richard Stark: The Score. Mysterious Press, ISBN: 0446677736 (October, 2001), 176 p., $12.00.