REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:         


RICHARD STARK – The Jugger. Pocket 50149, paperback original, 1965. Reprinted several times, mostly in softcover.

   A few years ago I re-read one of Richard (Donald E. Westlake) Stark’s old “Parker” novels in the standard “caper” vein, Green Eagle Score, so I recently thought I’d try something a bit different, and selected The Jugger, wondering, as I did, whether Stark’s writing would seem as fine now as it did to the High-School kid I was over forty years ago. My doubts were answered in the first two paragraphs:

   When the knock came at the door, Parker was just turning to the obituary page. He put the paper down and looked around the room and everything was clean and ordinary. He walked over and opened the door.

   The little guy standing there was dressed like he was kidding around.

   Right there. Right in your face, but gently, hints of death, something to conceal, and a trace of tough humor. Makes me wish I could write like that.

   The Jugger departs from the usual format of the series to center on Parker’s response when an old associate writes to ask him for help. It develops that the old-timer (the “jugger” of the title, i. e., someone who has done time in “the jug”) has been hounded to death by a venal cop looking for loot stashed away from previous capers. When Parker shows up just days after the jugger’s death, the cop is convinced he must have an inside track on Where’s The Money.

   I remembered this had a fairly perfunctory murder-mystery angle, but I forgot how abruptly Parker wraps it up. I also recalled a pleasantly tricky bit of business toward the end, as Parker makes sure the cop won’t double-cross him, and one other thing: When Parker responds to the jugger’s plea, he is not necessarily going to help him — he’s going to see if the old-timer has gone soft enough to sell out his friends and hence need to be killed.