matt4hire's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting entry into the Parker canon. Some of the later Parker books seem to be variations-on-a-theme type books; Breakout is all about breaking out of places, while Firebreak is about creating redundancies. This one is the strangest theme; it's Parker affecting everyday people's lives, and generally ruining them. It's really interesting reading, once that's noticed, and the side characters are interesting. Good stuff.
bundy23's review
3.0
Probably the weakest of the Parker books (so far). The major let down for me is that it was a little bit lighthearted at times which just doesn’t mesh with the brutality of the series up to this point. Luckily Parker still gives no fucks and will happily kill anyone dumb enough to get between him and the payload.
Sadly there’s now only one book to go before Parker leaves my life forever ☹️
Sadly there’s now only one book to go before Parker leaves my life forever ☹️
benfiretag's review
3.0
In which Parker narrowly escapes the cops. Which makes the money his crew stole worthless. As he escapes, he runs into a hunter, who is more interested in partnering with Parker to get revenge on a racetrack. Parker needs clean money. So, they set it up. But there are problems along the way and things never go the way they’re supposed to go.
jennyfael's review against another edition
4.0
J'ai trouvé que l'écriture de l'auteur était plutôt agréable, simple mais précise. Le roman dans sa globalité était agréable à lire, un peu lent parfois, mais avec des personnages aussi étranges que complexes, qui entretiennent des relations très tendues et l'intrigue est vraiment prenante. L'ambiance est totalement décalée et malsaine. Au final, je pense que j'ai bien aimé cette lecture mais la conclusion m'a un peu déçue.
ericwelch's review
4.0
Listened to the audio. Typical Richard Stark, aka Donald Westlake, but if you don't care for amoral heroes, you won't like Parker. Parker is the ultimate narcissist who sees the world only as how any action will affect him. If that means shooting someone who gets in the way, so be it. Nary a sign of remorse. This one gets complicated, a heist within a heist, while Parker is being pursued by the police from all over because of a botched bank robbery. Really good escapist reading.
guiltyfeat's review
4.0
The penultimate Parker picks up exactly where the ante-penultimate Parker ended. As usual Parker has to deal with situations not entirely of his making and, as usual, he is able to improvise to turn a buck and save his own skin. Only one more to go and I'll be sorry when it's done.
brettt's review
3.0
Donald Westlake's taciturn thief Parker meets Tom Lindahl one afternoon when the latter is out for a walk in the woods. Of course, Parker's in those woods because he's on the run from a police net that's hunting him and two other men who've just pulled off a robbery and he's more or less completely cornered when the rifle-toting Lindahl sees him climbing a hill.
Lindahl offers Parker a way out of the net and a place to hide for awhile -- but he has an agenda of his own. His racetrack employer did him wrong and he yearns to hit them back where it hurts by stealing their money. He didn't quite know how to go about doing that but now that an experienced thief has shown up he knows who to ask. For his part, Parker needs money that can't be traced to him or his recent job and even though there are a hundred complications and an amateur's clumsy fingerprints all over this one, he hasn't got many choices.
The 2006 Ask the Parrot is part of the "comeback Parker" set of novels Westlake wrote between 1997 and his death in 2008. This second group is sometimes faulted for having less of the bare-bones simplicity of the first set of Parker stories from 1962 to 1974, and while Parrot has a lot of virtues it shares some of that lack of focus. Westlake's pseudonymn "Richard Stark" matched the Parker stories well, in that they lacked the kinds of frills and whistles common to some other tough-guy tales set on either side of the law. A reader learned about Parker or others in the stories the same way they learned about each other -- by watching the action.
We see Lindahl's bitterness painted that way, alongside Parker's usual cool competency, but there are complicating characters and backstories that dissipate and slow down the linear progress of the main narrative. We do what we always do with Parker, which is get from point A to point B in a solid, entertaining fashion that wavers neither left nor right, but we spend a couple of beats too long glancing to the side while we're doing so.
Original available here.
Lindahl offers Parker a way out of the net and a place to hide for awhile -- but he has an agenda of his own. His racetrack employer did him wrong and he yearns to hit them back where it hurts by stealing their money. He didn't quite know how to go about doing that but now that an experienced thief has shown up he knows who to ask. For his part, Parker needs money that can't be traced to him or his recent job and even though there are a hundred complications and an amateur's clumsy fingerprints all over this one, he hasn't got many choices.
The 2006 Ask the Parrot is part of the "comeback Parker" set of novels Westlake wrote between 1997 and his death in 2008. This second group is sometimes faulted for having less of the bare-bones simplicity of the first set of Parker stories from 1962 to 1974, and while Parrot has a lot of virtues it shares some of that lack of focus. Westlake's pseudonymn "Richard Stark" matched the Parker stories well, in that they lacked the kinds of frills and whistles common to some other tough-guy tales set on either side of the law. A reader learned about Parker or others in the stories the same way they learned about each other -- by watching the action.
We see Lindahl's bitterness painted that way, alongside Parker's usual cool competency, but there are complicating characters and backstories that dissipate and slow down the linear progress of the main narrative. We do what we always do with Parker, which is get from point A to point B in a solid, entertaining fashion that wavers neither left nor right, but we spend a couple of beats too long glancing to the side while we're doing so.
Original available here.
antij's review
4.0
Another strong outing from Stark, though I did find some of the subplots in the middle of the story to be somewhat unnecessary and felt to some degree as filler. But as it's not a particularly long story even with these additional subplots, it didn't do much to dull my enjoyment.
imzadirose's review
4.0
Interesting 3 story are between the book before this and the next one. Enjoyable and crazy. Poor Parrot.
More...