Tag Archives: Crime

L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City by John Buntin

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Southern California became an interesting, fast-growing place after they started making movies in Hollywood and drilling oil wells wherever possible. The population boomed and so did crime. L.A. Noir tells the story of crime, crime-fighting and police corruption in Los Angeles between 1920 (when L.A. had become bigger than San Francisco) and 1992 (when Rodney King was beaten and 54 people died in a riot).

The book tells this story by focusing on the parallel careers of Mickey Cohen, a well-known local gangster, and William Parker, L.A.’s most famous police chief. They each had their good points, but Mickey Cohen was a thug and Chief Parker was a misguided right-winger. Los Angeles improved after they were both gone.  (2/14/13)

The Score by Richard Stark

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Published in 1964, this is the fifth in Donald Westlake’s series of hard-boiled crime novels. This time Parker agrees to join a dozen or so other thieves in taking as much as they can get from a small town in North Dakota. They plan to knock over a mining company, some banks, a loan company and some jewelry stores all in one night.

This is one of the best Parker novels I’ve read. It’s fast moving and relatively plausible, although Parker breaks some of his own rules, which leads to the usual complications. 

Parker only speaks when necessary and only says enough to get his point across:

“I don’t kill as the easy way out of something. If I kill, it’s because I don’t have any choice”.

“You mean self-defense”. 

“Wrong. I mean it’s the only way to get what I want”.  (7/8/12)

Ask the Parrot by Richard Stark

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For someone who makes his living as a thief, Parker doesn’t pull off many easy jobs. Something, or more than one thing, usually goes wrong. 

In this episode, Parker is on the run after a big bank job and conveniently meets a civilian who wants to pull off a different job, robbing a racetrack where he used to work. Instead of lying low and then pulling off the racetrack job, Parker and his new pal join a posse that is hunting Parker. Nothing goes smoothly after that. People get killed. Other crimes are committed. There’s a chapter written from the point of view of the parrot (it doesn’t end well). 

Parker is still a professional tough guy, but he does an awful lot of talking in this one. He shouldn’t have joined that posse.  (5/23/12)

Butcher’s Moon by Richard Stark

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Butcher’s Moon, published in 1974, is the 16th entry in the Parker series of hard-boiled crime novels. This one is a kind of summing up, since Parker recruits many of the guys he’s worked with on previous jobs to help him destroy a criminal organization in a Midwestern city. And the next Parker novel wasn’t published for 23 years. 

The situation in this one is that Parker and his fellow thieves stole $73,000 a few years ago, but had to leave the money behind. He goes back to get the money where he hid it, but it’s not there anymore. He figures it was the local crooks who took his money, so he tells them he wants it back. They don’t cooperate. Obviously a mistake. 

Butcher’s Moon has too many characters, too many corpses and too many implausibilities, but it’s worth reading if you like this kind of thing. In the last chapter, Parker doesn’t say a word. Other people do the talking. That’s a fitting ending, since Parker only talks when he has something to say, using as few words as possible.  (3/30/12)

The Outfit by Richard Stark

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Richard Stark (whose real name is Donald Westlake) has written twenty novels about Parker, a very tough guy who steals for a living. The Outfit is the third novel in the series. In this one, the Outfit (aka the Organization or the Syndicate) wants Parker dead, but Parker isn’t easy to get rid of. 

Parker quickly disposes of the guy sent to kill him and then comes up with a plan to get the Outfit off his back. The plan has two parts: (1) Parker and his fellow thieves will steal a lot of money from the Outfit and (2) Parker will replace the head of the Outfit with somebody who will agree to leave Parker alone if Parker and his pals stop stealing from the Outfit. The plan works.  (2/15/12)