The Man with the Getaway Face: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels)

I’ve read most if not all of Donald Westlake’s books and I enjoy them - they are witty and fun. He also writes books under the pseudonym, Richard Stark and these aren’t witty or fun. They are dark, unsentimental, non apologetic and extremely interesting. His hero is Parker, who is a crook with a straightforward approach to life and crime. This is the second in the series. All are great and I recommend them to anyone who is into “true crime” and the people who inhabit that sphere.

These books are like candy. I'm buying them slowly so that I can have a treat once in a while and not run out too fast.

Richard Stark returns with the follow up to his masterpiece, Point Blank. "When the mob wants you dead you can run, you can hide, or you can buy a new face." If it could only be that simple!

I have read ALL of Stark/Westlake's original Parker novels, and I have to say that the first five (and possibly the last) are the best ones. This ranks among the best.

Parker was surely an inspiration for Jack Carter, the gangster in the Ted Lewis novel Jack’s Return Home, later a Michael Caine movie - Get Carter. They’re both ruthless, ice-cold operators. Parker has also appeared in several movies including Point Blank with Lee Marvin, an adaptation of The Hunter, the first Parker novel. In The Man with the Getaway Face - the second in the Parker series and a direct follow-up to The Hunter - Parker is starting a new life after a face-lift necessitated by a run-in with the ‘syndicate’ - the hoods he’s trying to get away from. But his new life looks a lot like his old one - and starts with plans for an armed robbery. This job - which inevitably becomes more complicated than originally anticipated - takes up much of the action in a relatively short novel - only 200 or so pages - which flies by. At times, it feels a little perfunctory and overly concerned with the mechanics of the robbery, which isn’t all that interesting. What will keep you hooked though are the side-plots - and another mission for Parker, relating to his new face. The tension doesn’t let up - and there’s a brutal ending.