Fri 7 Dec 2018
Mystery Review: DONALD E. WESTLAKE writing as RICHARD STARK – The Seventh.
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[11] Comments
DONALD E. WESTLAKE writing as RICHARD STARK – The Seventh. Parker #7. Avon, paperback; 1985. First published by Pocket (#50244) as a paperback original, 1966. Reprinted as The Split (Gold Medal D1997, circa 1968). Also reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, trade paperback, 2009, under its original title. Film: MGM, 1968, as The Split, with Jim Brown as McClain (not “Parker”).
This is the first solo Parker novel that I’ve read in a long time, perhaps as long as 40 years. The one I read back then was OK but not great. To put it as succinctly and honestly as I can, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to. I think it was simply too terse, too hard-boiled, with no joy to it and absolutely np characterization to speak of.
I’m quite a bit older now, but it didn’t make much of a difference. When I read The Seventh earlier this week, I found I had exactly the same problems with as I did with that earlier one. Some thoughts follow, some fully formed, but others I’m still thinking about. (I won’t tell you which are which.)
First of all, I think that Parker’s adventures need someone like Alan Grofield, his sometimes companion in crime, in them go given them some much needed balance. The love of Grofield’s life is actually the stage, but what he also is is a devout thief. What he has that Parker doesn’t is personality. Enough to make his own capers go down very very smoothly, and his pair-ups with Parker a lot more fun to read. One note sambas may be fine with some people, but they’re not for me.
We may as well take The Seventh as an example of Parker on his own. This is a heist story with a bit of a twist. The heist goes off just fine. It’s the aftermath that the book is all about. It begins with Parker in desperate need for some ready cash, and thus agrees to work with six other men to steal a small fortune from a football game’s box office while the game is going on.
Each of the seven hole up for a while, some in pairs, some alone. Parker, who is holding all of the money, is one of the latter, save for a steady bed partner (female) he has picked up somewhere.
After a few days, he goes out for cigarettes. He comes back and finds the girl dead, pinned to the headboard of their bed with a sword. And — you guessed it — the money is gone. Did the killer just happen to find the money by chance, or was he after the money and the girl was only collateral damage? Both are likely possibilities. Either way, Parker is sore, and the killer — perhaps one of the other members of the makeshift gang? — had better beware.
Things do not turn out well, to put it mildly. This is a very short book, only 144 pages in the Avon edition and maybe even shorter in the original Pocket printing. Even so, a lot of people don’t manage to survive it, and ypu can easily conclude that one big huge mistake on Parker’s part is the reason why.
Westlake has all of the writing chops you could ask for, but I think I’d have rather he hadn’t revealed the killer as early as he did. My interest in what happened after that flagged considerably, nor is Parker is the kind of guy you’d ever like to meet, and I find him too one-dimensional to care about his exploits either.
On the other hand, another possibility occurs to me. Was Westlake playing games with his readers when he wrote the Parker books? Was he trying to make his “hero” as blunt and hard-boiled for his readers as he could without going way over the top with him?
One last thing, and these are facts, not opinions or speculations. The movie The Split that was based on the book has a terrific top-notch cast: Jim Brown, Diahann Carroll, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, James Whitmore, Donald Sutherland and Joyce Jameson. I’ve never seen it, and I know they changed the story line considerably, but could you find a better bunch of heist movie actors than this?
December 8th, 2018 at 1:38 am
I guess I’m with you about the Parker series by Westlake because it’s been decades since I last read one of the novels. I’ll have to read one and see what I think now.
Concerning the film, THE SPLIT, you are also on target about the great cast. But the movie was sort of a disappointment to me. I found it ok but nothing special and gave it a 5 out of 10. The IMDB gives it a mediocre rating also.
December 8th, 2018 at 5:06 pm
I’m not surprised to learn that the movie is a dud, in spite of the cast. I can’t think any of Westlake’s books that turned out well when they made them into movies Perhaps I’m missing one, or even two?
December 8th, 2018 at 9:01 am
I enjoyed these quite a lot in High School. In fact, you could say the Parker books are what led me to become an international man of mystery. I’ve still got the series in original paperback on my shelves, and maybe I’ll get back that way next year… or sometime.
December 8th, 2018 at 5:08 pm
I may have simply chosen the wrong two to read over the years, but if any self-respecting thief would hook up with him again after hearing how badly this job turned out, they’d be crazy.
December 8th, 2018 at 6:18 pm
Westlake famously did a multiple interview of himself with Westlake, Tucker Coe, and Stark for ARMCHAIR DETECTIVE at the end of which Stark murders the others, which seemed to sum up how he felt about Stark.
I really have to disagree about the films of his work though with POINT BLANK and HOT ROCK among them, and frankly I like THE BUSY BODIES.
Looking for a hero in the Stark books is pointless though. Westlake set out to write books about an amoral criminal loner and he stayed true to the concept never once softening or humanizing the character. I suspect the model was W.R. Burnett’s crime novels, but Stark takes them a step further.
I like the Stark books as superbly hard boiled novels about a totally amoral hero who never-the-less has a “code” he stands up to and expects from others. I do think they are more crime novels and thrillers than mysteries, and the point, as with Spillane, is the increasingly violent cathartic nature as the protagonist fights to survive and prosper. As part of that there isn’t much more than the surface to the people in the books.
Of course, unlike Spillane, the Parker books don’t care much if justice is served as long as vengeance is.
It’s not often you get something unique in literature, and the Parker books were that. They have been copied, and well copied since, but like Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, or Patrick Hamilton’s Gorse they are creations that are true sociopaths not softened by their creators as time passes.
December 8th, 2018 at 6:25 pm
There are many who consider The Hunter to be one of the best thriller novels ever written. Certainly it has been adapted enough times. My reaction was I understood the attraction but the character and story too dry and serious. I do have Lemons Never Lie on my to read list because it is supposedly lighter and features Grofield.
I am a big fan of the Dortmunder books, but not as much for the films.
Westlake has done some decent screenplays such as The Grifters and Point Blank.
He is credited for the story to the first episode and co-creator of the infamous TV series Supertrain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqgHaHDIjWs
December 9th, 2018 at 12:03 am
I’ve put together a list of movies based on Westlake/Stark’s books along with their IMDb ratings, from highest to lowest. I’ve omitted foreign films, but I have included one made-for-TV movie. I may have missed one or two. If so, let me know.
7.4 The Axe
7.4 Point Blank (Stark’s The Hunter)
7.1 The Outfit (Stark)
7.1 Payback (Stark’s The Hunter)
7.0 A Slight Case of Murder (Enough; TV Movie)
6.8 The Hot Rock
6.3 Cops and Robbers
6.2 Parker (Stark’s Flashfire)
6.1 The Split (Stark’s The Seventh)
6.1 Why Me?
5.7 The Busy Body
5.6 Bank Shot
5.5 What’s the Worst That Could Happen?
5.4 Two Much
4.8 Slayground (Stark)
4.7 Jimmy the Kid
I don’t know about you, but about half of these were new to me.
December 9th, 2018 at 1:10 am
Jean-Luc Godard’s experimental film “Made in U.S.A.” is an important work of cinema. It is based allegedly on a Stark novel.
December 9th, 2018 at 1:12 am
One of the reasons I find Westlake’s novels better than the film versions is the basic difference between novels and films.
The reader is involved in creating the world and how the characters look. While the film audience is passive and has the filmmakers do it all.
WHY ME? was a strange book, one that needed the reader to adapted it into a believable story with its own reality. The movie failed because the filmmaker’s reality didn’t support the comedy of Westlake.
Casting is a bigger problem with Dortmunder than Parker. Christopher Lambert as John Dortmunder?
As a thriller Parker works but what makes the book’s Parker better than the films is the limits of the anti-hero.
What is great about Westlake is his ability to establish a reality that is acceptable to the reader, but the novels reality are often too odd or just off normal to be translated to the visual reality of film.
December 9th, 2018 at 7:21 pm
Thanks, everyone, for the long, interesting discussion of Parker, Donald Westlake, and the movies made of his books. If it turns out that I have a choice, the next Parker I read will be THE HUNTER.
Not only does it come now with recommendations, but it’s the first in the series, so that makes sense, too.
December 9th, 2018 at 7:58 pm
Slayground, The Outfit, and Cops and Robbers are good. The first two are Parker with Peter Coyote and Robert Duvall in the Parker role respectively.