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The Jugger (Parker #6)
Parker travels to Nebraska to help out a geriatric safecracker who knows too many of his criminal secrets. By the time he arrives, the safecracker is dead and Parker's skeletons are on the verge of escaping from their closet, unless Parker resorts to lethal measures.
ebook, 0 pages
Published
June 15th 2010
by University of Chicago Press
(first published 1965)
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In Richard Stark's The Jugger, everybody's favorite sociopath Parker (AKA Charles Willis) has to beat cheeks to Green Acres when his osteoporotic middle man Joe Sheer sends out a distress signals, and Parker, looking out for Numero Uno, is worried that Sheer's goose is cooked and that there might be a lot of bread crumbs lying around the joint leading straight back to him. And—as we all know—Parker doesn't do criminal celebrity. This leads to successive run-ins: first with a shady crook from Par...more
view all 4 comments
Apr 19, 2013
Jane Stewart
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
noir-crime-fiction
An average story most of the way, but I liked the twists and turns at the end.
Parker comes to town after receiving a strange letter from one of his guys. The guy died after sending the letter. Strange things are happening. A bad cop is involved. Parker is trying to figure it out. Then Parker kills someone which shocked me. I shouldn’t like this because he killed a kind-of-good person. But the “shock” was what I liked. And the ending I liked. It seemed Parker had everything all nice and neat and...more
Parker comes to town after receiving a strange letter from one of his guys. The guy died after sending the letter. Strange things are happening. A bad cop is involved. Parker is trying to figure it out. Then Parker kills someone which shocked me. I shouldn’t like this because he killed a kind-of-good person. But the “shock” was what I liked. And the ending I liked. It seemed Parker had everything all nice and neat and...more
When Parker gets a couple of letters from retired safe cracker Joe Sheer saying that he’s having problems, he’s worried that the old man is getting pressured into revealing secrets. Since some of those secrets would be about him, Parker packs a bag and is off to Nebraska thinking that he may have to permanently shut Joe up.
After he arrives in the small town that Joe had settled in, Parker learns that Joe is already dead, supposedly from a heart attack. But the police chief is instantly on Parke...more
After he arrives in the small town that Joe had settled in, Parker learns that Joe is already dead, supposedly from a heart attack. But the police chief is instantly on Parke...more
Parker heads to Nebraska to help out a friend in trouble, Joe Sheer, a retired safecracker (or jugger). Only when he gets to town, Sheer is dead and a crooked cop and a crook both think Parker knows where to find Joe's stash of stolen money. But does the money even exist?
The Jugger is a break from the usual Parker formula. Instead of planning a job, Parker has to get a crooked sheriff off his back and convince the interested parties that Sheer didn't have any money. Of course, Parker does it in...more
The Jugger is a break from the usual Parker formula. Instead of planning a job, Parker has to get a crooked sheriff off his back and convince the interested parties that Sheer didn't have any money. Of course, Parker does it in...more
May 09, 2013
Krycek
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime-fiction,
tough-guys
I guess a "jugger" is a guy that breaks into safes, and Joe Sheer was one of the best, was being the operative word. Now he's come down with a bad case of dead and Parker's concerned, not because Sheer was his golf buddy or anything, but he was one of the few people with a direct connection to Parker and Parker's got a sweet little cover identity set up. He doesn't want anyone nosing around Sheer's death to blow it. Throw in an aging crook who looks like he failed an audition for The Monkees and...more
Joe Sheer is a character who has appeared in other of Richard Stark's Parker novels, He's a retired jugger --a safecracker, I had to look it up as well. Now in his seventies he lives quietly in a podunk town outside Omaha, NE, where he keeps his finger in the game by keeping track of some of the old crowd, getting messages to those who need them, and occasionally helping out during the planning stages of a job. Parker often says, "if you need me, get in touch with Joe Sheer."
Sheer sends Parker a...more
Sheer sends Parker a...more
After the juggernaut of a heist in The Score, Parker is basically back on track. Which means that it's time for the author to throw another curve at our favorite self-employed entrepreneur. It would have been hard to follow such a major heist with a more outlandish heist, so this book moves into noir territory. By pushing Parker into this situation, we get a chance to view his methods and personal code in another light.
Donald Westlake had an amazing ability to craft a story. Unfortunately, craf...more
Donald Westlake had an amazing ability to craft a story. Unfortunately, craf...more
I've beer reading the Parker novels chronologically. After The Score
i took a break, and wasn't even sure I'd feel like getting back into this character: it began to get a little monotonous. (Although, it's partly the point: Parker is such a machine of an operator. He reminds me sometimes of Valery's Monsieur Teste).
The Jugger surprised me a little. The writing goes up a notch, psychology and motivation of some of the characters get better coverage, and it is the first in the series kinda resem...more
i took a break, and wasn't even sure I'd feel like getting back into this character: it began to get a little monotonous. (Although, it's partly the point: Parker is such a machine of an operator. He reminds me sometimes of Valery's Monsieur Teste).
The Jugger surprised me a little. The writing goes up a notch, psychology and motivation of some of the characters get better coverage, and it is the first in the series kinda resem...more
Richard Stark doesn't give much a description of what Parker looks like. He's a big guy with gnarled tree trunks for hands. This description is given in just about all of the early novels.
It's probably safe to think of Parker as looking sort of like a Lee Marvin type, and since he has probably most famously portrayed Parker, maybe this is what some readers use as their mental image:
Some people might like to think of him as a raving wife-beating anti-semite:
Parker has also been portrayed as an A...more
It's probably safe to think of Parker as looking sort of like a Lee Marvin type, and since he has probably most famously portrayed Parker, maybe this is what some readers use as their mental image:
Some people might like to think of him as a raving wife-beating anti-semite:
Parker has also been portrayed as an A...more
Parker, the master thief and ultimate anti-hero, is on vacation in Miami, when he gets an ominous and out of character letter from retired safe cracker Joe Sheer, who acts as Parker's contact to the criminal underworld. Sheer is in trouble and asks Parker to come to his small town Nebraska home to help. When Parker arrives, Sheer is dead of an apparent heart attack, and cops and crooks alike are lining up to cash in on the fortune they believe Sheer squirreled away. Parker needs to walk a fine l...more
Reading Richard Stark's Parker series is one of my favorite things to do, especially while on vacation. I've only got a few left, so I'm enjoying each one. The Jugger was a little different. There actually was no money to score for Parker. He's trying to save his other identity, Charles Willis, from being discovered and ruined. He's worked hard to maintain this cover name, and when it is threatened by incidents in this book, Parker needs to solve this problem. This entails some murders (some don...more
Another one of my favorites in the series thus far. Whereas Parker is usually defined by his ability to see all the angles and more importantly play them appropriately, in 'The Jugger,' he is constantly one step behind. It adds a level of expertise to his previously explored professionalism, as we see in several instances just how amoral and efficient his decisions can (must) be.
This was the most 'whodunnit' of the novels thus far, and it eschews some of the traditions that would go along with...more
This was the most 'whodunnit' of the novels thus far, and it eschews some of the traditions that would go along with...more
This starts out like a mystery. You have no idea what's going on or why Parker is out in the middle of nowhere. It's a clever change of pace to keep things fresh in a series that often plays on the character's singl-mindedness and reliance on routine.
The slow unwinding of what is essentially a non-plot (the macguffin is that there isn't one) is well handled, and Parker's actions in attempting to keep his Charles Willis cover intact is typically brutal.
The narrative structure uses a lot of fals...more
The slow unwinding of what is essentially a non-plot (the macguffin is that there isn't one) is well handled, and Parker's actions in attempting to keep his Charles Willis cover intact is typically brutal.
The narrative structure uses a lot of fals...more
This is the original hard boiled tough guy. Stark (Westlake writing as Stark) boils the essence of a smart no-nonsense tough guy down from the work of the greats that wrote detective and crime fiction before him, and created Parker. Forget the movies you may have seen - be they timeless classics or modern dreck - and do yourself a favor and read these. If you like crime fiction you have to check these books out. The Chicago Press has re-released them in sharp stylish new paperbacks that are inex...more
Mar 27, 2012
John Wilson
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime-fiction,
donald-westlake
A retired con buddy by the name of Joe Sheer writes Parker asking for help. Someone's leaning on him and as a result, everything Joe knows, including Parker's known aliases are in danger of being found out. So Parker drives over to Joe's fleaspeck Nebraska town. Not to help him, you understand. But to either kill the guy leaning on Joe. Or Joe himself before he blabs everything.
But somebody's already beaten him to it. And Parker must deal with a corrupt cop, a sleazy heistman (Tiftus) and severa...more
But somebody's already beaten him to it. And Parker must deal with a corrupt cop, a sleazy heistman (Tiftus) and severa...more
Apparently, Westlake thought this was his worst book. All writers should bottom out thus. Sure, it's not the best, by a long shot, but this novel of Parker trying to figure out what happened to a former partner in crime (a safe cracker, or jugger) who has died mysteriously falls outside the usual Parker territory—no heist—but is in a way the more interesting for putting Parker in an unusual situation. And it does still feature the usual cold-bloodedness of Parker and multiple intersecting plots...more
Parker has a problem. He got a letter from Joe Sheer, a retired safecracker he'd worked jobs with in the past and who now served as his jugger, go-between, for others in their profession. In the letter, Joe asks for help with a problem.
Parker wasn't worried about helping him as much as protecting himself. When he arrives in town, Joe is dead, about to be buried, and too many people are nosing around in the man's business. Parker had already given his "civilian" name before he learns all this, th...more
Parker wasn't worried about helping him as much as protecting himself. When he arrives in town, Joe is dead, about to be buried, and too many people are nosing around in the man's business. Parker had already given his "civilian" name before he learns all this, th...more
I was tempted to go 5 stars on this, as it's just a fantastic tight little tale. But I suppose it doesn't fit the description of "amazing".
Whatever.
Throughout this story, like most Parker stories, you find yourself constantly thinking, "Oh man, Parker's gonna kill this guy." Or, "OK, Parker's gonna kick this guy's ass now."
But then he never does, when you think he will.
He's so ruthless as a character (meaning that Westlake is brilliant as the writer) that not only does he catch his victims off-...more
Whatever.
Throughout this story, like most Parker stories, you find yourself constantly thinking, "Oh man, Parker's gonna kill this guy." Or, "OK, Parker's gonna kick this guy's ass now."
But then he never does, when you think he will.
He's so ruthless as a character (meaning that Westlake is brilliant as the writer) that not only does he catch his victims off-...more
Parker is a problem-solver, and usually these problems arise in the course of planning and committing robberies. In The Jugger, however, Parker's problems are the residual result of a life of crime. Sometimes, Parker must solve problems not to earn money but just to stay out of jail. The staying-out-of-jail Parker is less interesting than the earning-money Parker, but Parker is always Parker, which is to say that The Jugger is a good read.
Parker novels are the best, this one is kind of sleight but still fun. Recently I watched some shitty movies that had me thinking about how iritating it is when a story is built on a 'plot twist' that is only surprising because there is no way human beings could act that way. This comes by its twists honestly, i.e., the twists are always that the most obvious possible thing has happened, and still you are surprised. Well, I was.
The Parker novels are not about good men. They're about bad men doing bad things, but despite that, the novels are like observing watch works in action. Parker problems solves in real time, which is another aspect of the series I really find interesting. He is absolutely amoral, and treats people and the law as simple obstacles in the pursuit of his profession. He kills if he needs to, breaks arms, threatens, and lies as necessary.
It's really great.
It's really great.
I love the PARKER novels -- this one was written in 1965 -- Pulp Noir at it's best. They've been turned into some great movies (PAYBACK with Mel Gibson, POINT BLANK with Lee Marvin, SLAYGROUND with Peter Coyote). My favorite part about these books is their portrayal America in the 60s -- set in small towns like Newport, KY and Steubenville, OH; as well as big cities like Miami and NYC. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Somewhat of a depature from Parker's usual storyline, we find our favorite thief returning to a small town in Nebraska. He ties up a few loose ends at the death of his former partner, a safecracker ("jugger"). This is one of my favorite Parker books, to date. Lots of close shaves, greed, and desperados. Westlake's hardboiled writing is sharp. Not much humor or wisecracks distracts the reader.
Quick, brisk, and breathtakingly amoral, Parker is the perfect antidote for sugary-sweet heroes. Unbridled by rules and immune to mores, Parker burns through the pages of his life with a calculating coldness that makes him unpredictable for anyone who comes across his path.
This was a fun read and a must for any fans of gritty, noir, crime novels.
This was a fun read and a must for any fans of gritty, noir, crime novels.
This is another good Parker book. It wasn't quite as engaging as the first five, but it was still a fun, fast read. Parker really is the ultimate hard-ass criminal. There are times in this book where. you know what he is going to have to do in order to cover his tracks, but you think "They aren't. going to have him do that " and then he does.
Parker finds himself drawn into the search for millions allegedly owned by a former safecracker, who had become Parker's phone operator. Parker has to find his way between outright thieves (the police captain) and opportunists (Tiftus, among others) to get himself out of the siltation.
Some Parker fans consider this a lesser effort from Stark, but honestly, it's one of my favorites in the series. Parker gets a call for help from an associate-- he responds, not out of altruism (a quality Parker does not possess) but self-preservation; the associate has information about our man and letting that information get out won't do. So Parker finds himself in a small, corrupt town matching wits with several players all in search of some hidden loot.
We see Parker at his most brutal here-...more
We see Parker at his most brutal here-...more
Another solid Parker yarn.
This one didn't have a heist or a revenge theme, but it more a story about the shit he's gotta deal with sometimes in order to keep the world working his way.
Cool ending too. Good place for me to take a break til the next book.
This one didn't have a heist or a revenge theme, but it more a story about the shit he's gotta deal with sometimes in order to keep the world working his way.
Cool ending too. Good place for me to take a break til the next book.
I've been reading all the Parker novels in order, and so far this is the most unique of the series. I won't give away the details, but I can say that Parker is put in a situation that is much different than in the other novels, and we have an opportunity to learn more about the supporting characters. This is a welcome change after the last two caper novels (The Mourner, The Score), and I anticipate the narrative created in The Jugger will carry on through the next book, and possibly keep going.
T...more
T...more
The big problem with Richard Stark is that his books are too, too short. But it's understandable why, because Stark writes with such *absolute* perfect precision that each sentence contains exactly the words it needs to have, and no more. It's amazing writing. His characters are pitch-perfect and fascinating, his dialogue is brilliant and packed with dead-pan humor. He's a master, plain and simple. You cannot go wrong with one of his novels.
I wish all mysteries were like this; I'd be an addict....more
I wish all mysteries were like this; I'd be an addict....more
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“Already today I hit you twice. Once I knocked the wind out of you, once I knocked the consciousness out of you. Here you are back the third time. You call that smart?”
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“Well, it just figures," Younger told him, like a man explaining his religion.”
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