Honor Among Thieves

Donald Westlake wrote quite a bit, and among the many top-quality works he offered were a series of novels about the professional thief Parker. He published these under the pseudonym "Richard Stark," in a group from 1962 to 1974, and then picking them up again in 1997 until his death in 2008. Flashfire is a part of the later group, published in 2000.

Flashfire opens with Parker and three other thieves -- Melander, Carlson and Ross -- finishing a successful heist. Parker, having provided the distraction to let the other three rob a bank, meets up with them to split the take and return home. But when he finds that the trio actually planned to use the money from this job to finance one much larger -- and riskier -- he decides to take his money and bow out. But they need his money to finance their second job, so guns are drawn, crosses are doubled and Parker is left with a fraction of his share and a promise he'll get paid back. What the other three will learn is that Parker's going to handle the paybacks and he'll make sure they get exactly what they've got coming to them.

Westlake made Parker hardboiled enough to crack a black hole, and tells his story in straightforward, unadorned style that resembles Evan Hunter's "87th Precinct" work as Ed McBain -- if Hunter's work qualified as "police procedurals," Westlake's might be thought of as "crime procedurals." Flashfire does offer some interesting extras in the person of Leslie Mackenzie, a realtor Parker uses who has a sharper eye than most people and bigger dreams about her future that she thinks he might be able to bring about. Parker's also trying to figure out who sent a hit team after him and how he can get that particular wrinkle ironed out without dying. Even with some different layers, Flashfire is a perfect example of how a great writer can ratchet up tension, describe intricate details, paint vividly realized characters and tell a fantastic story with the same words you'd find in a Tom Swift book -- certain adult Anglo-Saxon expressions aside, of course.

Parker presents a conundrum for a reader -- he's our main point of view character and our protagonist. We tend to root for those people when we read novels, but this particular protagonist is also a vicious criminal. Throughout the series, we see Parker presented as a man who won't kill unless he has to, but of course he's the one who defines whether or not he has to, and many of those decisions don't involve self-defense. The people in his shadowy world have made their own bed, of course, and there are those like Leslie who choose to risk entering it and so can be held responsible for rolling their own dice. But some just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their lives end in order to ensure Parker can escape or that no information about him can get out. That's practical, pragmatic and just common sense in Parker's world, but it's not admirable.

I've no problem calling myself a Westlake fan -- or even a Stark fan, given that Westlake's other books come with a different enough voice that most folks could probably tell the difference even with a cover and all distinguishing names removed. But I can't say I'm much of a Parker fan, and I'm certainly glad to encounter him only in the black and white of the printed page where he works.