Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel
    Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel
    Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel
    Ebook165 pages3 hours

    Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel

    By Richard Stark and Charles Ardai

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “Hearing the click behind him, Parker threw his glass straight back over his right shoulder, and dove off his chair to the left.” When a job looks like amateur hour, Parker walks away. But even a squad of seasoned professionals can’t guarantee against human error in a high-risk scam. Can an art dealer with issues unload a truck of paintings with Parker’s aid? Or will the heist end up too much of a human interest story, as luck runs out before Parker can get in on the score?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2010
    ISBN9780226772912
    Plunder Squad: A Parker Novel

    Read more from Richard Stark

    Related to Plunder Squad

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Domestic Disturbance

      May 23, 2021

      Nothing is as it seems in the compulsive new tale from bestselling Irish novelist and screenwriter Jo Spain. THE PERFECT LIE (Quercus, $34.99) opens with Erin Kennedy waking early on a Tuesday morning to sea air and sex with Danny, her detective husb

      2 min read

    • Article

      Drain the Swamp

      Sep 28, 2017

      Drain the Swamp
      6 min read

    • Article

      Muddy Waters

      Sep 6, 2021

      If you want to write something that sells, write nature. The bookshop shelves are rammed with tomes about walking in the countryside, stopping to sniff the flora and fondle the fauna, taking time out of your hectic dash to the grave in order to appre

      2 min read

    • Article

      3 Intriguing New Science Fiction Titles

      Feb 15, 2018

      A new year brings new voices in all the genres. But in science fiction and fantasy, much of the writing is not only new but also exploratory, pushing the boundaries set by earlier writers, breaking new imaginative ground.  And since this is science f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start With: Stephen King

      Aug 25, 2022

      Truly the king (pun definitely intended) of horror fiction, Stephen King has been terrifying readers for more than half a century. With more than 60 novels and 200 short stories to his name, the author of It and The Shining is something of a literary

      3 min read

    • Article

      November Fiction

      Oct 18, 2022

      Long Shadows (Macmillan, £22) Don’t get me wrong. When it comes to fiction, I’m all in favour of sensitive renderings of one woman’s journey into something or other; one man’s anguished struggles to understand himself; thoughtful if largely plotfree

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 16, 2023

      What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second, Light P

      3 min read

    • Article

      TV That Takes You From An Alternate Oxford To A Galaxy Far, Far Away

      Nov 15, 2019

      Disney Plus debuted “The Mandalorian” Nov. 12, and HBO is offering “Watchmen” and “His Dark Materials.” Which are worth viewers’ time?

      3 min read

    • Article

      Silverview

      Oct 20, 2021

      Viking £20 Julian Lawndsley, notionally the protagonist of John le Carré’s last novel, arrives in a Suffolk seaside town to put aside his past in the City and start a highbrow bookshop. He is befriended, half against his will, by Edward, a charming P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Into The Abyss

      Nov 4, 2022

      Into The Abyss
      3 min read

    • Article

      Freeze Frame

      May 24, 2021

      The hit crime mystery Reservoir 13 confirmed that Nottingham novelist Jon McGregor knew his way around a gripping page-turner. But with Lean Fall Stand he takes on a more profound challenge; the language and thought processes of a brain in crisis. Fi

      2 min read

    • Article

      Grave New World

      Apr 21, 2022

      Grave New World
      15 min read

    • Article

      How Choose Your Own Adventures Helped Me Win The Booker Prize

      May 27, 2023

      The hero of a kids’ book doesn’t usually die. In Choose Your Own Adventure books, a children’s series that has sold more than 270m copies and been translated into 40 languages since its launch in 1979, the hero dies multiple times, in unpleasant, une

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Journey Of The Antihero

      Sep 29, 2020

      The Journey Of The Antihero
      11 min read

    • Article

      Bullet Time

      Oct 5, 2022

      Bullet Time
      1 min read

    • Article

      Games Alan Wake II

      Dec 7, 2023

      Games Alan Wake II
      2 min read

    • Article

      Pushing Boundaries

      Oct 2, 2023

      Walter Isaacson has written biographies of former Apple boss Steve Jobs, gene editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna and Albert Einstein. Now, he’s taken on one of the biggest and most divisive personalities of our time. ELON MUSK (Simon & Schuster) is a mo

      4 min read

    • Article

      5 Books Making News: Gods, Monsters, and Refugees

      Feb 21, 2017

      The first volume in Philip Pullman’s new “The Book of Dust” trilogy is coming in October. Pullman tells the BBC the books are not a sequel or a prequel but an “equel” to his Dark Materials series. The six books on the International Prize for Arabic F

      8 min read

    • Article

      Colour Out Of Space

      Feb 7, 2020

      OUT 28 FEBRUARY CERTIFICATE 15 DIRECTOR Richard Stanley STARRING Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson SCREENPLAY Scarlett Amaris, Richard Stanley DISTRIBUTOR StudioCanal RUNNING TIME 111 mins TBC Only Nicolas Cage could leave off examining the meteorite th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Verses Mode

      Sep 9, 2021

      Verses Mode
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Plunder Squad

    4/5

    54 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The penultimate novel in the first run of Parker Books, Plunder Squad begins with Parker dealing with two immediate problems: funds are running low and a man he once left alive (not intentionally) wants revenge. A third problem immediately crops up as he discovers that the potential job that opens the novel is unworkable. Soon he finds a finds a better prospect, but while planning this one he also has to clean up the remnants of the aborted job and deal with the revenge-seeker before he strikes again. Quick and enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      Another good Parker novel. As usual, a lot happens & Parker is perfectly Parker. The beginning of the book had me wondering as there's quite a glitch in the dates, but otherwise it hung together well. Good reader & the audio volume was a lot better on this one than the last I listened to. i can't wait for the library to get more of the series.
    • 4/5
      Solid later Parker where he spends more time setting up jobs and dealing with crossers than heists. Like The Getaway in that respect. But Westlake excels with the characters he creates...
    • 4/5
      Parker and the Art HeistReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (June, 2013) of the Random House hardcover (1972)Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author 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.Plunder Squad finds Parker and a team of heisters working on an art theft for a middle man who is hard pressed to raise the front money for the heist. Several past Parker characters make a return in this book, including George Uhl from The Sour Lemon Score and Stan Devers from The Green Eagle Score. The book also features a crossover scene with Dead Skip (1972) by Joe Gores, when Parker goes to the door of the squad's safe house in order to put off a skip tracer. The scene is repeated in Gores' book from the skip tracer's perspective. Narrator Joe Barrett does a good job in all voices in this audiobook edition. 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 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 LinksThere is a brief plot summary of Plunder Squad and of all the Parker books and adaptations at The Violent World of Parker website.Unlike many of the 2010-2013 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook editions which share the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009-2010 reprints, this audiobook DOES include the Foreword by author Charles Ardai.
    • 4/5
      "Then there were fifteen minutes of small-talk. Parker never took pleasure in that kind of thing, but he knew other people found it necessary and he'd trained himself to take part in it.”

      Parker was the wonderful creation of Donald Westlake, writing as Richard Stark. All of Parker titles are being reissued by the University of Chicago Press. I’ve read many over the years, bought a couple more than once because I couldn’t remember which ones I had read (pre-Goodreads,) but never-mind, they hold up well even on second reading.

      Parker is the bad guy you root for in that subconscious we all have that wishes we could step out of our roles and be the tough anti-hero.

      Plunder Squad, unlike many of the others, reads a little like several short stories linked together by two tenuous threads: the search for George Uhl who tried to kill him, and art heists populated by a motley group of thieves who often can’t seem to get it right.

      Some marvelous passages. Leo Sternberg, one of the thieves, lives in London but only steals in America. He checks into the motel where they are to have their first meeting. "Ghastly. Drinking glasses in the bathroom were encased in little white paper bags imprinted with a message including the word ‘sanitized.’ A similar message was on the paper band bridging the toilet seat. It was like dating a sexual hysteric who can never stop talking about her virginity.”

      All of the Parker novels are very-well done, terrific for travel reads.
    • 4/5
      Parker in the Bay Area? Woo hoo! He’s looking for work and he’s looking for George Uhl.This almost reads like a Dortmunder book, with all of the things that go wrong in it. Except it's Parker, who doesn't have the good humored nature of Dortmunder. At all. The big art heist is the main gig in here, and it has one of my all-time favorite distractions, provided by Tommy and his girlfriend! Crazy original!This book ends fairly upbruptly, so I'm excited to read the next one! Love me some Parker!

    Book preview

    Plunder Squad - Richard Stark

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1