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    Backflash: A Parker Novel
    Backflash: A Parker Novel
    Backflash: A Parker Novel
    Ebook259 pages3 hours

    Backflash: A Parker Novel

    By Richard Stark and Lawrence Block

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    About this ebook

    Parker's got a couple of rules that have helped keep him alive throughout his long career. One of those is never to work on a boat. But with a gambling boat cruising down the Hudson, stuffed to the gunwales with cash, Parker’s got a plan, a team, and a new rule: a shot at a big enough score makes any rule worth breaking. Parker and his crew hit the boat, hard, but as always, there are a lot of complications—and a lot of bodies—before this one's in the bag.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateApr 15, 2011
    ISBN9780226773001
    Backflash: A Parker Novel

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    Reviews for Backflash

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    • 4/5
      Another classic Parker from Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake.) In this episode, Parker is approached by Cathman, a disgruntled ex-state employee who ostensibly has it in for gambling and the state wants to increase its revenue stream by allowing riverboat gambling. Cathman has blueprints of the boat and additional details, so Parker checks him out and decides it's possible to pull a heist.

      As with all the Parker stories, you know there will be a glitch, there always is, so the suspense and interest come less from the planning and details of the heist (and this one is quite complicated), but as much from watching and enjoying how Parker manages to deal with the unexpected and odd difficulties.

      Definitely one of the better Parker novels.
    • 5/5
      Once again, Richard Stark/Donald Westlake writes a well put together, well written Parker story. As far as I can tell, there has never been any bad or even average writing ever done by Westlake.
    • 4/5
      Parker is a professional thief who goes about his business with ruthless efficiency. In his eighteenth outing the heist involves a casino ship sailing the Hudson River in upstate New York and a lot of the book involves deciding whether the inside man is trustworthy, if the theft is viable, and the gathering of the crew once the decision to go ahead is made. Secrecy is compromised on several levels and there’s a lot for Parker to clean up. As usual, light and entertaining.
    • 5/5
      “Backflash” is the eighteenth novel in the Parker world. It is wedged between “Comeback” and “Flashfire” and, as Lawrence Block points out in the introduction, this is Westlake (aka Stark) having fun with his titles and connecting them. It is part of the second set of Parker novels, published from 1997 to 2008 after a 23-year hiatus from the series. These are longer novels than most of the original sixteen. In some ways, they feel smoother, more professionally finished.

      This one involves what looks for most of the book more like a con game from The Sting than a simple show your guns and rob them kind of caper. The subject of the caper here is a gambling boat running a route up and down the Hudson River in upstate New York. “It looked like any small cruise ship, white and sparkly, a big oval wedding cake, except in the wrong setting. It should be in the Caribbean, with Tommy Carpenter, not steaming up the Hudson River beside gray stone cliffs, north out of New York City.”

      This is a trial run for the boat and estimates of how much dough is traveling on the boat range in the neighborhood of several hundred thousand. A retired, but still well-connected state bureaucrat has got the idea for the caper and engages Parker to do it. Parker likes the money angle, but for the life of him, can’t figure out why this straight- laced career bureaucrat is even involved in such a thing. Parker himself organizes the crew in this one and it includes a number of characters from other Parker novels, including a couple from the art caper in Plunder Squad such as Noelle, whose main job there was to take off her clothes and distract the sheriff’s deputies and Mike Carlow who explains that people get used to everything, but being dead. The wonder of this book is how Parker’s crew cons their way onto the boat and then off it with the loot and I won’t spoil it by telling about it.

      The great characters in this book don’t stop with Parker’s crew, but include the state bureaucrat that engages Parker on this enterprise and others that try to get in his way. Some of the descriptions are hysterically funny like the motel clerk with the “neat egg-shaped head with straight brown hair down both sides of it, like curtains at a window, and nothing much in the window” and the bartender who looked “like a retired cop who’d gone to seed the day his papers had come through.” Then there’s Susan Cahill, who is in charge of guest relations on the gambling boat, “she in low-heeled pumps, dark blue skirt and jacket” and “her smile looked metallic, something stamped out of sheet tin. The hand she extended, with its long, coral-colored nails, seemed made of plastic, not flesh.”

      The book is simply another great addition to the Parker universe. It is written in Westlake’s tight prose and filled with action and planning and double-crosses.
    • 4/5
      Parker and the Riverboat CasinoReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (April 2013) of the Warner Books / Mysterious Press hardcover (October 1998)Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime writer Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.In Backflash, Parker is engaged by a retired state bureaucrat who is morally opposed to gambling and a new state initiative for a trial run boat casino. Parker enlists a heist crew who take on disguises for their entry onto the boat with one part of the crew doing the robbery and the others to get the loot off the boat separately. Parker is suspicious of the insider bureaucrat's motives and senses that a betrayal may be planned so he has to keep watching his back throughout. These final Parker novels from #17 to #24 seem stronger and more complex than the original run which was probably due to Westlake/Stark's development as a writer over the years and during the 23 year hiatus. Several of these are strong 4's to 5's (I've actually read or listened to all of them now and am just parceling out the reviews over time).Backflash is the 2nd book of 5 in a title arc by Richard Stark where the second syllable in each one-word title provides the first syllable of the next one as in 1) Comeback, 2) Backflash, 3) Flashfire, 4) Firebreak and 5) Breakout.Narrator Keith Szarabjka does an excellent job in all voices in this audiobook edition. The narration includes the Introduction by Lawrence Block as read by Szarabjka. I had never previously read the Stark/Parker novels but became curious when they came up in my recent reading of The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Sept. 2020) by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager. Here is a (perhaps surprising) excerpt from their discussion with author Amor Towles:Nancy: Do you read Lee Child?Amor: I know Lee. I had never read his books until I met him, but now I read them whenever they come out. I think some of the decisions he makes are ingenious.Jeff: Have you read the Parker books by Donald Westlake [writing as Richard Stark]?Amor: I think the Parker books are an extraordinary series.Jeff: They feel like a big influence on Reacher, right down to the name. Both Reacher and Parker have a singular focus on the task in front of them.Amor: But Parker is amoral. Reacher is just dangerous.Jeff: Right. Reacher doesn't have a conventional morality, but he has his own morality. Parker will do anything he has to do to achieve his goal.Amor: But to your point, Westlake's staccato style with its great twists at the end of the paragraphs, and his mesmerizing central character - these attributes are clearly shared by the Reacher books.The 24 Parker books are almost all available for free on Audible Plus, except for #21 & #22 which aren't available at all.Trivia and LinksThe Backflash page at The Violent World of Parker website is not as complete as those for the earlier books, but does provide cover images of the different editions.Unlike many of the 2010-2013 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook editions which share the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009-2011 reprints, this audiobook DOES include the Foreword by author [author:Lawrence Block|17613].

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