Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Butcher's Moon: a Parker novel

So this wins the award for the best Parker novel with the absolute worst title.  Having finished the book I still don't know what the title is referring to.  The title, thankfully, is the only bad thing about this book.  Even though this is the 16th book in the series this is more of a follow-up to Slayground, although one could argue it's a pretty faithful follow-up to all the books that have come before it, and by it's end it's quite the reunion tour for Parker and his band of merry men.
Parker has had a string of bad luck and needs cash, so he decides to head back to the town where he left a fortune behind so that he could escape with his life.  And so begins an epic story for Parker, one with a delicious amount of twists and turns that ends up with him, once again, taking on a large section of the mob.
This is easily the longest of the Parker books I've read, clocking in at 300+ pages, it's almost double some of the books - and has enough story to fill two or three.  One of Stark's signature styles is to tell the story from multiple points of view, and sometimes re-tell certain moments that way as well.  Most of the time I love that aspect of this - he really gets into the persons head and lets you know how they tick.  The only problem in a book like this, which has such a driving-force-narrative, it feels like we're constantly putting on the brakes when I just want to keep moving.  And given how many characters and story there is, the brakes come out just a little too often for my liking - but that critique is only because the story was so damn good that I didn't want it to stop.
I really need to look into see who has the rights to these books.  I know that they are currently remaking The Hunter (I assume it's that one) with Jason Stathom, but I don't know if they've locked down the rights to the entire series, or just that book.  A Parker television series would be even better...
So yeah, pick this book up.  I'm lucky that I've gotten onto Parker when I did because it appears as though the reprints of these books have just started coming out recently - this one in particular was just released in April of this year, before that it was apparently impossible to get a copy of without paying an arm and a leg.  So take advantage of the re-printing and get yourself one of the absolute best crime fiction stories ever... although it might be more rewarding to pick up a few other Parker books before getting to this one.  At the very least read Slayground first.
Butcher's Moon: A Parker Novel

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