Bandon Public Library

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating...

The coldblooded criminal known as Parker tries, and fails, to stay under the radar in rural New England: "Nobody does the noir thriller better than Stark." -San Diego Union-Tribune In Ask the Parrot, the followup to Nobody Runs Forever, ruthless thief Parker is back on the run, dodging dogs, cops, and even a helicopter. His escape brings him to rural Massachusetts, where he is forced to work with a small-town recluse nursing a grudge against the...

"Lots of bleak fun . . . This stellar series just gets better and better." -Publishers Weekly (starred review) The saga begins with a poker game gone lethally awry. When Parker goes in on a messy scam-stealing an armored car-with someone he barely knows, as usual the amateurs get in the way of the job. From a nervous ex-con and his well-intentioned sister to a bank manager's two-timing wife and a beautiful, relentless cop, too many people have...