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The Hunter (Parker #1)

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 2,483 ratings · 306 reviews

In The Hunter, the first volume in the series, Parker roars into New York City, seeking revenge on the woman who betrayed him and on the man who took his money, stealing and scamming his way to redemption.

Mass Market Paperback, 199 pages

Published 1962 by Pocket Books

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Jan 10, 2011 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i liked the movie better. and that's really not supposed to happen unless you're talking about the godfather. yeah, point blank is a surreal jagged & fucked-up masterpiece and lee marvin is cooler than god, but it ain't just the merits of the film, it's the deficiencies of the novel. i think the problem with the hunter lies in that, this being the first of the series, stark felt he had to create a firm foundation, establish character, theme, tone, and all the other literary junk that doesn't...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebooks, kings-of-badassia, crime, hardboiled-and-noir, betrayal-and-revenge, 1954-1969

When PARKER is after you...IT’S PRETTY MUCH

4.5 to 5.0 stars. I haven't read oodles of crime fiction but this is certainly one of the best I have read so far. Parker is a pinnacle of the noirish, badass main character. He's simply superb. In this first installment, Parker returns to New York to “even up the score” with some former crew-mates who double-crossed him and left him for dead. Uh…BIG MISTAKE (for them). Now Parker is out for payback and it's pretty much lights out for his former assoc...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of hard-boiled crime and noir

Recommended to Mike by: Goodreads group Pulp Fiction Member

Shelves: crime, noir, hard-boiled, thieves, the-syndicate, the-outfit, the-organization, amorality, anti-social-personality, killers, series-debut, series, pseudonyms, donald-westlake, 2012

The Hunter, Donald Westlake aka Richard Stark writes the first Parker Novel

I wrote an absolutely brilliant review of The Hunter: A Parker Novel last night. Trust me, it really was. Then it simply vanished. The laptop hiccuped and all those wonderful words went off to where good words go to die.

Richard Stark was a guy I had never heard of until I joined goodreads group Pulp Fiction. Donald E Westlake, I had heard of. I was in Junior High School when I read Fugitive Pigeon. It was a stitch, althou...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Emily rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, classics

This man is intimidating:

But still isn't as bad as Parker, the protagonist (of sorts) in this crime favorite. The plot is pure "dick lit": Guy gets thrown over by wife Lynn, and Mal--(wannabee bad ass who has a penchant for whores) for forty thousand dollars in a heist. Heist goes swell. Fallout...not so much. Lynn actually shoots five bullets in Parker but the most deadly bullet hits his engraved "p" belt buckle and saves his life...even with the house burning down to the ground. Whoa.

Mind yo...more

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Jan 14, 2011 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-fiction

"He stopped looking mean and he stopped looking mad. He kept working at it, and when he was sure he looked worried he went on into the bank."

The first half of The Hunter is near perfect. Parker hits New York City, entering the town with a rumbled ill-fitting suit and a very pissed off look on his face huffing it over the George Washington Bridge. The image of him stomping in to the city with just the thought of killing his ex-wife and Mal, the couple who shot and stole forty something thousand d...more "He stopped looking mean and he stopped looking mad. He kept working at it, and when he was sure he looked worried he went on into the bank."

The first half of The Hunter is near perfect. Parker hits New York City, entering the town with a rumbled ill-fitting suit and a very pissed off look on his face huffing it over the George Washington Bridge. The image of him stomping in to the city with just the thought of killing his ex-wife and Mal, the couple who shot and stole forty something thousand dollars from him on a job a year ago, is wonderful and stark (sorry I couldn't resist). Who walks into Manhattan like it's some old West town?

The first buckle in the books taut perfection comes when for a brief moment Parker questions what he has become, how he went from being a careful heist man to someone going out of his way to seek revenge even if there ends up being no pay-off at the end of the road. Pay-off as in money. Cash. Once (**spoiler? well you'll see this coming a mile away) Mal is taken care of the book really starts to get kind of loopy and Parker stops being the tough professional and flips into a tough psychopath hellbent on making the mob give him the money that had been stolen from him. The story gets a little kooky here and pulp tropes are played around with a bit too much. Stark doesn't seem to know how he wants to end the book, and the book kind of starts doing some sputtering fit and starts as the basic premise for the second book is set up.

If I hadn't read a couple of later books I wouldn't have some of the problems I have with the ending of this book. It would have been more in character for Parker to have killed Mal and then walked away, leaving himself in clear and able to work again another day. The tacked on mob ending isn't Parker tying up loose ends, it's fraying the crap out of the end of the rope and leaving himself with an unraveling mess that he will still have to deal with in the future.

On a side note, I also just finished watching Point Blank, the Lee Marvin movie based on the novel and it was a little disappointing in the humanizing that was done to the Parker character. It was an entertaining movie to watch, but there was a bit too much of a tortured psyche given to the character. I can't imagine Parker ever having nightmares about having roughed up a few people and killing one or two more. From the opening scene in the movie the Parker character is pulled into killing against his will. This probably makes the movie character a bit more likable to audiences but it changes something fundamental about the character.

P.S. Originally, I rated the book with four stars. For entertainment value it is a four star book, but as I was drifting off to sleep last night some of the problems I had with the book started to bother me and I've docked a star. I can't just give all the Parker books four stars, can I?(less)

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Jan 08, 2010 Dan Schwent rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: christmas-gift, crime-and-mystery, hardcase-writers, 2010, favorites, westlake

Four men collaborate on a heist and everything goes well until one man decides he can't share and tries to off the others. But Parker doesn't die and comes looking for revenge! But will revenge be enough for Parker ...?

Wow. I'd been looking forward to reading Richard Stark's Parker books for quite some time and I'd say I'm hooked with the first one. Parker's a relentless force of nature with few redeeming qualities. The writing shows just how versatile a writer Donald Westlake was, powerful yet...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Anthony Vacca rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book reads like a machine explaining to you how it operates, which, oddly enough, is not normally a compliment I would give a book I really enjoyed.

There is something compelling about the sense of how little the characters who crawl around the contours of this novel realize how completely inhuman they all are. They live their lives like various species of carnivorous fish stuffed into a too small aquarium. In a lot of ways, The Hunter seems out to prove the point that, there is a lot to be...more This book reads like a machine explaining to you how it operates, which, oddly enough, is not normally a compliment I would give a book I really enjoyed.

There is something compelling about the sense of how little the characters who crawl around the contours of this novel realize how completely inhuman they all are. They live their lives like various species of carnivorous fish stuffed into a too small aquarium. In a lot of ways, The Hunter seems out to prove the point that, there is a lot to be said when it comes to the notion of the banality of evil. And says all this with little more than a shrug and the question, “So what?”

Just take the focal character of this novel Parker (notice that I avoided using terms such as protagonist or hero or even anti-hero—none these terms seem to apply adequately in the moral vacuity that seems to be the pulse of this world.); he is a man of brutal efficiency and single-mindedness when it comes to whatever objective he has at hand. Oddly enough, these two traits make Parker a compelling character; he is like Jack Bauer without all those messy morals and emotions.
There is something fairly alien about reading a passage in any novel, where a character punches an unsuspecting woman in the face, knocking her out cold, and neither feels remorse or any kind of pleasure from the act. That’s just the kind of man Parker is; but he’s not a sadist—he just understands that sometimes people are going to get in the way of the things you want. And lucky for Parker, he doesn’t care about anyone else besides himself.

But it feels wrong to simply admire Parker for being such a hard man who follows the tradition of being the guy in the room who’s the best at whatever it is he does. There are points when Parker proves that you will never be able to relate with him when he shows no qualms about killing innocent people, as long as it serves some function that benefits himself. Otherwise it would just be a stupid and inefficient act.

But in a way you can’t blame Parker for the fact that he uses people like they were single-use condiments; in the world Stark has created with this novel, that’s just sort of par the course. There are other characters who are sadistic, and who do take pleasure from the misery of others; but never does Mr. Stark’s narration or his characterization present these characters as villains who go around being oh-so pleased with their villainy. There just out to make themselves happy in the best way they see fit.

And so what would make Parker happy? Well, first he’d like to find his wife and ex-heist partner who left him shot up in a burning mansion; then he wants to see about the forty-five thousand dollars they ripped off of him and gave to the mob. In that order.

This basically sums up the plot of the novel and Parker’s character. He is not particularly compelling in any dimension beyond the 2nd. But that doesn’t mean he comes off as a caricature or comic book character. He is just the kind of man who passes time by staring at a television screen, marking off each thirty minute interval. He gets no pleasure from the programs; I don’t think he even really registers them. But he has to find some way to make moments of inaction pass.
What is compelling about Parker, and the whole of The Hunter, is seeing how deftly Mr. Stark presents us this little, existential and nihilist take on the world, disguised as a crime caper. His prose is to-the-bone precise, and as clear as a black-and-white movie. In short, yes, I plan on reading the next in the series because when it comes down to it, this novel is like the passing car wreck you can’t help but stare at.(less)

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Mar 15, 2013 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Kelly by: Jim

Shelves: thrillers

What I liked: The concise writing with the same kind of economy of words as his main character Parker. Parker's staccato dialogue was scary as all get out, but kind of funny at the same time. I liked trying to figure out his strange code of honor ;-) The last 70 pages made me want to read the next book in the series and in the last few pages of the book there were a couple sentences that showed he was actually a human being with a heart and I liked that...sort of a teaser that makes me want to f...more

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Sep 05, 2010 Kemper rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-mystery, thieves, bad-guys-rule, favorites, parker

When we meet Parker, we don’t know much about him. He’s just a guy with shabby clothes and a bad attitude walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York without a dime to his name. Within hours of arriving in Manhattan, Parker has used an early ’60s form of identity theft to fill his wallet and set himself up quite nicely. Clearly, this is a resourceful guy. As we quickly learn in The Hunter, he’s also a guy that you do not want to double-cross.

A professional thief, Parker was betray...more When we meet Parker, we don’t know much about him. He’s just a guy with shabby clothes and a bad attitude walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York without a dime to his name. Within hours of arriving in Manhattan, Parker has used an early ’60s form of identity theft to fill his wallet and set himself up quite nicely. Clearly, this is a resourceful guy. As we quickly learn in The Hunter, he’s also a guy that you do not want to double-cross.

A professional thief, Parker was betrayed, robbed and left for dead by one of his partners, Mal Resnick, who turned Parker’s wife against him. Mal used the money he took from Parker to pay off a debt he owed to the Outfit, and now he’s got good connections to the mob in New York. Parker doesn’t care who got the money or who Mal knows, he just wants to satisfy his grudges.

It’d been a while since I’d read any of the early Parker novels, and I was a little worried about how they’d hold up. Thankfully, they‘ve aged with style. With Parker, we’d get the prototype to the anti-hero professional thief, and there are countless fictional characters that owe a debt to him.

Since this initial book has Parker seeking revenge for a very personal double-cross, he’s more angry than he’d be for most of the series, but he’d always have that blunt and no-nonsense nature. On some levels, Parker seems completely amoral, but he’s a ruthless pragmatist, not a psychopath. He doesn't hurt anyone unless it's necessary, but if he needs to kill someone to get away with the loot, he doesn't hesitate for a second.

I read somewhere once that when asked why he used the Richard Stark pen name for these novels, that Westlake replied that he wrote his funny comic capers as himself on sunny days but that on rainy days he wrote as Stark. Fortunately for crime fans, Westlake must have had a lot of rainy days.

And a big Thank You to the University of Chicago press for reprinting the hard-to-find early Parker books in these gorgeous trade paperbacks. (less)

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Apr 12, 2013 Jane Stewart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: noir-crime-fiction

It was fun. It was different. It’s about a loner bad guy (totally alpha male) in the bad guy world.

At first I wasn’t sure if I would like this. Parker kills a couple innocents who happened to be in his way. But I really enjoyed the last third or so when Parker took on the mafia/syndicate. He tells them who he’s going to kill if he doesn’t get his way. And then he does it. The story is a little shorter than most novels. The author is a good storyteller. I like the way he writes.

One thing a little...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Doug Haynes rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book, for me, is what defines hard edged gritty fiction.

First in the now epic 'Parker' series started by Donald E. Westlake under the name Richard Stark in the early 60's. While the single minded juggernaut that is Parker may not be the first protagonist with absolutely zero redeeming traits he is definably the longest running. It has always amazed me just how interesting a man with no emotion, morals or regret can be. Parker is the definition of shallow, a one dimensional man with a one t...more

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Nov 10, 2008 Michael added it

"The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they knew his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree."

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Oct 01, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: noirboiled

The defining moment of the first Parker novel comes in a throwaway scene: Parker, searching for a location from which to surveil his prey, forces his way into a beauty shop, knocking out its proprietress with a punch to the chin. Parker gags her and ties her wrists and ankles together, cutting the cord with pair of scissors that he finds in a desk drawer. At first, he doesn't think anything of the inhaler that he finds along with scissors, but then he notices that the woman is dead. Parker's rea...more

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Jun 26, 2011 V. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Stunning lean writing that is relentless in the pursuit of a singular goal. While Parker is an almost unreal figure, unstoppable and ruthless, and also not in the least bit likeable, he is somehow made sympathetic. The forces against him are huge, the only woman he risked loving betrays him, and he never wants more than a fair shake.

Everyone in this story is an unpleasant character, but they are shown to be weak or strong, not in what they have but in what they want and what they're willing to...more

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Nov 19, 2012 Ensiform rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, saw-the-movie

Parker, a brutish, gorilla of a man and a small-time crook, reluctantly takes on a job with an ex-syndicate man named Mal, who betrays Parker by convincing his wife to shoot him and leave him for dead. A year later, out of prison and penniless, Parker tracks his wife and Mal down, then goes after the syndicate itself to get his share of the money back.

I found this book thoroughly unpleasant, with no sympathetic characters and only laughably stupid straw men for Parker to prove his toughness agai...more Parker, a brutish, gorilla of a man and a small-time crook, reluctantly takes on a job with an ex-syndicate man named Mal, who betrays Parker by convincing his wife to shoot him and leave him for dead. A year later, out of prison and penniless, Parker tracks his wife and Mal down, then goes after the syndicate itself to get his share of the money back.

I found this book thoroughly unpleasant, with no sympathetic characters and only laughably stupid straw men for Parker to prove his toughness against. The book’s been praised to the skies by everyone from Elmore Leonard to the New York Times, but I just don’t understand the appeal, unless the reader just enjoys the adolescent fantasy that he’s the moronic Parker. The prose is sparse and at times ridiculous: “women in passing cars looked at him and felt vibrations in their nylons.” The juvenile slyness of this phrase aside, it assumes all intelligent, professional women are entranced by a wife-beating idiot in grubby clothes and shoes with holes in them. And Parker is indeed an idiot. I found the description of his making of a fake driver’s license (he just kind of draws one and crumples it up) to be unintentionally hilarious; he starts hitting a woman who gave him perfectly good information without stopping to think about why the information isn’t useful at that specific moment; his enemies are, to a man, brainless straw men who allow him (hulking, brutal, unsmiling Parker, remember) to approach them and ask them for change before taking a gun out of his lunchbox to get the drop on them! Yes, this really happens. Several times. To tough syndicate gun men who are in fact prepared and waiting for him. The entire second half of the book, Parker vs. syndicate, is utterly absurd, from the way Parker deals with the men to his ridiculous threats against them (“pay me or I’ll start telling my friends to start robbing your shipments!” – a non-problem, surely, that they’d have encountered many times before and dealt with). Really, the whole thing is just ludicrous, and Parker is utterly unappealing. Did I mention that he was planning to cross Mal before he himself got crossed? Yeah. Uh, go, Parker?(less)

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Feb 11, 2011 Josh rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

I only read this because all the cool kids are doing the same. Pretty good read. Kinda mindless but that's OK because Parker's a cool character and he kills people and doesn't afraid of anything. Totally perverse entertainment but entertaining all the same. Who cares about morally and emotionally balanced characters anyway?

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May 16, 2013 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

Once again, I go backwards into a series…

Well, not precisely, as I started reading about Parker with the second book, The Man With the Getaway Face, thinking that the first volume was made of unobtainium. But, the Inter-Library-Loan system has come through once again!

Since I did not “cheat” and read about Parker outside of the books (and others’ reviews of the books I’ve read) I was unaware of some critical “backstory”.

(view spoiler)...more
Once again, I go backwards into a series…

Well, not precisely, as I started reading about Parker with the second book, The Man With the Getaway Face, thinking that the first volume was made of unobtainium. But, the Inter-Library-Loan system has come through once again!

Since I did not “cheat” and read about Parker outside of the books (and others’ reviews of the books I’ve read) I was unaware of some critical “backstory”.

(view spoiler)

But it’s all good. The Hunter is Parker at his basic, brutal, best. He sets goals and works completely and continuously towards them, letting nothing and no one sway him. He neither wants to nor can understand why other do not see things his way and accommodate him. His world truly is “stark”.

Like most of the earlier books it’s short and a fast read. But the writing is tight and crisp with little spare flesh. Westlake may have intended it for a one-off pulp offering, but fortunately that market rejected him and a wiser editor saw the true value in the character and story. (There is a great intro in the edition I read.)

If you can, begin the series with this book. It is one of the best series starts ever in the crime-murder sub-genre. I’ve liked many of the Parker books, but I was really pleasantly surprised by this one. It has to be one of the best in the entire run. I’m just a hair short of giving it five stars for the brilliance of the creation and writing. If you have any interest in gritty fiction, then rush, no run right out and get your hands on a copy. I’ll wait.

Four-point-Five (4.5) to Five Stars

P.S. Once again, I have to credit Dan with seducing me into reading the Parker books. Many Thanks!
(less)

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Apr 07, 2013 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Everyone thinks Parker is dead but they're wrong. On a heist that went very sour, his loving wife emptied a pistol into him in order to save her own hide. One bullet hit his belt buckle and brought him down, the others missed altogether. (It was dark.) Now after bumming his way cross country, which is not his style at all, Parker is back in New York City. He looks up his wife -- only mild hard feelings there. He is really after Mal Resnik, the man who set up the heist, killed everyone involved,...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Stunatra rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: noir fans, lovers of short novels

I'd read two novels by Don Westlake and I didn't much care for them, there was just something about the prose and the way they were written that didn't sit well with me, and I had written off Westlake as one of those authors to keep in my regular reading cycle; and that saddened me because he was such good friends with one of my favorite writers: Lawrence Block.

Then I kept hearing about this Richard Stark. And I said to myself, I know that name, where do I know it from? Then I remembered! It wa...more I'd read two novels by Don Westlake and I didn't much care for them, there was just something about the prose and the way they were written that didn't sit well with me, and I had written off Westlake as one of those authors to keep in my regular reading cycle; and that saddened me because he was such good friends with one of my favorite writers: Lawrence Block.

Then I kept hearing about this Richard Stark. And I said to myself, I know that name, where do I know it from? Then I remembered! It was from Richard Bachman. Richard Stark was the inspiration for Richard Bachman! Soon as the light-bulb went off, I said to myself, I gotta check out me some Richard Stark. Of course, I wanted to start from the beginning so I picked up The Hunter. And then another light-bulb went off. Where did I know this title from? Why did it sound familiar to me? It was the inspiration for one of my favorite Mel Gibson movies, PayBack! So I didn't hesitate a second longer, I read The Hunter.

Though different from the great movie, The Hunter was great in itself, different enough to be a joy to read. I love these short noirish novels. They have so much energy, they stick to the point and are so refreshing to read, they don't bore you to death with details; and you can finish them in a day or two. I have to say, Parker is one of my favorite new characters, and thanks to Stark, Westlake will now be among my regularly cycled authors. I plan to read all the Parkers. And then maybe I'll give Dortmunder another try, perhaps start from the beginning and see what happens.

One of my favorite parts of the book:

The Waitress kept asking Parker if he wanted anything else. It distracted him from looking out at the street. She had a band on her finger, so finally he said, "What's the matter, don't you get enough from your husband?" So after that she left him alone, just glared at him awhile from the other end of the counter, but he could ignore that. He could look out at the street, and let his fifteen cent cup of coffee cool.(less)

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Dec 08, 2012 Clark Hallman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime

Richard Stark was one of the pseudonyms of Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who was a very prolific, and acclaimed, noir crime fiction writer. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed their Grand Master award on Westlake in 1993. In The Hunter (1962), Westlake introduced the Parker character and he subsequently wrote 24 Parker novels, published between 1962 and 2008. These Parker novels are hardboiled crime fiction that presents violent criminals who are likely to punish and/or kill anyone who int...more Richard Stark was one of the pseudonyms of Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who was a very prolific, and acclaimed, noir crime fiction writer. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed their Grand Master award on Westlake in 1993. In The Hunter (1962), Westlake introduced the Parker character and he subsequently wrote 24 Parker novels, published between 1962 and 2008. These Parker novels are hardboiled crime fiction that presents violent criminals who are likely to punish and/or kill anyone who interferes with their criminal plans. The Parker character that Westlake introduces in this book is perhaps the quintessential example of that ruthless criminal. In this book, Parker and two of his associates steal $90,000, but one of his partners (Mal) tries to murder Parker by shooting him and then burning the building down. Mal also kills the other partner and escapes with the entire take. As you might have guessed, Parker did not die and he comes looking for Mal, who now works for a large criminal organization that used to be known as “The Syndicate” but is now known as “The Outfit” or “The Organization.” Parker wants his share of the money ($45,000) that Mal had taken from him. He believes in a strong code of honor among thieves, and he plans to hunt his cutthroat murderous ex-partner down, and punish him for breaking that code of honor, and then to kill him. He also is determined to get his $45,000, and he will do whatever is necessary to get it. Parker shows no sympathy to those who try to prevent him from accomplishing his mission and he does not hesitate to eliminate anyone who gets in his way. He kills plenty of adversaries in this book, including some high-ranking members of “The Organization” and some collateral casualties. In addition to guns, Parker also uses his hands to dispatch his enemies when necessary or when it feels right to him. The Hunter is a shockingly violent beginning novel in this series. However, Parker is a fascinating and unpredictable character that is compelling to readers who are not deterred by violence. I intend to read more Parker novels, and if you like hardboiled crime novels, I highly recommend that you read this book and the subsequent books by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake) in the Parker series. (less)

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Sep 22, 2012 wally rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: stark

this will be the 1st stark story i've read...something about the fall maybe...leaves falling...six days of rain...furnace running from time to time...a game on the tube...

(1962)...also published under the title payback...kindle...strange how it opens on the 1st "page"...i like looking at the pages before a story begins...published date, noted...dedicated to whom?....doesn't say...hmmm.

kindle cover, a shapely woman in the foreground, black silhouette, a man in a...are those called fedoras?...also...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Jared Logan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the first of the Parker books by Richard Stark. Stark is of course the pseudonym of Donald Westlake, the prolific pulp writer who started in the 50s and published hundreds upon hundreds of crime, sci-fi, adventure and erotic novels. The Parker books are a gritty crime series with an antihero lead that you hate to love. As heroes go, Parker sucks. He hits women. Often. He kills innocents. Sometimes when he doesn't even really have to. He's a dirty blackguard through and through but, of co...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Rob Kitchin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Parker’s an interesting character, mainly because he’s so one-dimensional. He’s a ruthless, thuggish, though by no means dumb, criminal who’s determined to get his way and is prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve that, almost exclusively through violence. There’s very little sentiment or reflection in his actions, and he has his own code of justice, which mainly consists of seeking revenge and compensation against anybody who crosses him, and helping himself to whatever takes his fancy. St...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Harold rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is the book the movie "Payback" with Mel Gibson is based off of. Some of this book is spot on with even some of the dialog, however, where it is important to be similar is the character personality, for me. The character portrayed in the book is hard and unforgiving, not driven by anything more than killing the guy to betrayed him on a job, not the same job in the movie. There wasn't the want for the return of the money like in the movie but more just on the killing. It seemed an after thou...more

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Jun 23, 2010 Tony Gleeson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm finally getting around to the early books in Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake's) Parker series. Thank heaven for the relatively new University of Chicago reissues of books that, until now, have been criminally difficult to find! Obviously the original book is the best place to get going. We are introduced to the cold, amoral and inexorable Parker as he jumps right into action, avenging his double-cross and supposed murder at the hands of his partner-in-crime and his wife. The interest of...more

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Apr 15, 2010 Eric_W rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: mysteries-and-thrillers

I'm pretty sure I saw this many years ago as a movie and a little research indicated I was right: Point Blank (1967) and Payback with Mel Gibson (1997?). I believe I only saw the Gibson version.

Hard to believe that Richard Stark is a pseudonym for Donald Westlake who writes such humorous novels. The Parker novels are anything but. In this, one of the first Parker stories, he has been left for dead, shot by his wife, saved only by his silver belt buckle (!!!). Parker would not hesitate himself t...more

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Aug 05, 2009 Loren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From ISawLightningFall.com

Cognitive dissonance. College-level psychology may teach the technical details of the term, but experience usually schools us all in a far more primal understanding of it early on. We learn quickly that cognitive dissonance is best friends with perplexity, confusion and denial. It wrinkles the brow, raises your blood pressure and knots the muscles in your neck. It likes to show up when you realize that, yes, you just intentionally cut off that person in rush-hour traffi...more From ISawLightningFall.com

Cognitive dissonance. College-level psychology may teach the technical details of the term, but experience usually schools us all in a far more primal understanding of it early on. We learn quickly that cognitive dissonance is best friends with perplexity, confusion and denial. It wrinkles the brow, raises your blood pressure and knots the muscles in your neck. It likes to show up when you realize that, yes, you just intentionally cut off that person in rush-hour traffic and, no, your recently completed story doesn't seem to be drawing the accolades you believe it so richly deserves and, huh, maybe buying into the financial sector a couple months back wasn't the bright idea your stockbroker made it out to be. Cognitive dissonance can tie you in mental knots, wake you up before the roosters and put the most absurd rationalizations in your mouth. The peculiar mental state that arises when holding on to conflicting suppositions is something I'm becoming familiar with after reading Richard Stark's dark-as-night noir The Hunter.

Parker should have died after the heist. His accomplice in thievery, Mal Resnick, had forced Parker's wife to empty a revolver into him and then had set fire to the building as he lay bleeding. But Parker struggled out of flames only to be caught by the cops and sent straight to the pen. There he nursed his broken body and wounded pride, waiting, formulating a plan. He wanted Mal, wanted his neck in his hands, wanted to twist and squeeze until the life fled. Then one day opportunity gave him an opening. A guard got sloppy and then got dead, and Parker got out of jail early. Now he's out to indulge in revenge, the oldest of vices. The hunt is on.

Let me say it straight: I like The Hunter. I like Stark's striking, unadorned style. (In case you didn't know, Richard Stark is the pseudonym of the prolific and ever-entertaining crime writer Donald Westlake.) I like the plot's inexorable progression, how Parker homes in on Mal like iron to a magnet. What I don't like is Parker himself. We're told that stories need at least a mildly sympathetic protagonist to succeed, right? But there isn't a single amiable thing about Parker. He lies, steals, bullies, extorts, betrays and murders. He abuses women and kills men, often with his bare hands. He is not, as an old Lit prof used to say, the kind of person you'd want for a roommate. Trent at The Violent World of Parker blog calls him "a ruthless thug" who "doesn't care about a living soul other than himself. Some of the things he does will be repellent (I hope) to readers."

Sounds like a good reason to stay away, doesn't it? But hordes of fans haven't since Parker first appeared in print in 1962. Certainly excellent of craft, Stark's ability to seize the imagination with a handful of choice words, provided a draw. It did for me. It also helps that the novel largely avoids salacious detail, a fact that authors who work in the gritty genre hinterlands ought to note. But it's more than that. For myself, The Hunter reminds me that while humanity may be crowned with glory and honor, goodness isn't our natural state. We're closer to Parker inside than any of us care to admit.(less)

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Apr 26, 2009 Tim Niland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-reads

They left him for dead, gutshot in a burning building. But they didn't make sure he was really gone and that was their fatal mistake. Because when the criminal is Parker, hell hath no fury. Tracking the double-crossers to new York City, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Parker wants the man who set him up, and when that isn't good enough, he decides to take on the whole east coast mob - solo. So begins one of the greatest series in post-war crime fiction, Stark's (aka Donald Westlake) great...more

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Mar 08, 2009 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-badness-noir, fiction, eye-for-an-eye

A great start to a fine crime series. I hesitated over reading this one, since I've seen both the Lee Marvin and Mel Gibson versions. Not to worry, the book is considerably different (though Gibson's version seemed closer to the original story). Stark's (Westlake) Parker is one brutal character, and probably the ultimate anti-hero. And in this, the first novel, he enters the story (and NewYork) like some sort of caveman, wired for survival:

"His hands, swinging curve-fingered at his sides, like t...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Tfitoby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: black-as-night

“I'm going to drink his blood, I'm going to chew up his heart and spit it into the gutter for the dogs to raise a leg at. I'm going to peel the skin off him and rip out his veins and hang him with them.”

Parker is one angry man, he's been crossed, left for dead, thrown in jail for vagrancy, had to cross an entire continent and now he's a hunter who wants payback at point blank range.

Knowing a little about this series of books and how highly fellow pulp fans rate the first book, published in 1962...more

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About Richard Stark

A pseudonym used by Donald E. Westlake.

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Quotes from The Hunter

“The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree".” — 2 people liked it

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The Hunter (Parker #1)

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