Wednesday, July 13, 2011

The Mourner: a Parker novel

I've reading these books out of order, mostly because I don't want to wait for them to show up in the proper order from the library.  They aren't really the kind of book that you need to read in order anyway, so that's just fine and dandy.  I'm bound and determined to read all of the Parker novels.  There are, from what I recall, two dozen of them and this was my third, and I've got four more in a stack on my desk.  Park is almost like an anti-James Bond and I think you could make an awesome film, or even television, series out of him. 
Like all of the Parker books I've read so far he really likes to play with the order of the story, and has no qualms with walking away from one character to follow another.  It's almost as if Parker isn't the main characters in the story so much as 'the job' is, and so that's what we follow.  Which is fine by me - Stark (Donald Westlake) is a master and knows exactly what he's doing.
What I thought was interesting about this one was how we got to see more of 'the job' than we normally do, in the other books those sections are often breezed over and it's more about the set-up and the aftermath. 
There's twists and turns, dames and danger, these isn't a whole lot not to like in this one.  Highly recommend checking out this series if you're into crime fiction at all.  Pretty easy to get through the Toronto Public Library as well if you happen to live in the GTA.
The Mourner: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels)

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