Well, let's see here. There's been a lot of Richard Stark hoopla around our little corner of Goodreads lately, and I am proud to offer this review as minor corrective to the unbridled enthusiasms unleashed herein. Despite whatever I may say in the course of this review that might lead you to believe otherwise, I did actually enjoy this book. But it is slight, insubstantial, and clunky at times. I'd like to say, with some slippage in the analogy, that it's the equivalent of watching one of those women-in-peril television movies that Lifetime rebroadcasts. They're kind of dumb and pointless and obvious, but the fact of the matter is that at the end of the two hours you've somehow sat on your ass and watched the whole damn thing, so it must have been successful in some important sense. (This is an especially noteworthy success—for me, at least—since not even the big-budget, much-loved Inception achieved it.) Despite the fact that the TV movies are often poorly-executed and have all their plot points transmitted via smoke signals from miles off, I stick around to see if psychotic stalker Jack Wagner manages to rape Judith Light in an empty hockey arena or to find out if the vindictive blonde sex-kitten in Shannen Doherty's college rock band murders her in retaliation for Doherty beating her in a talent contest when they were kids.

Richard Stark—at least in The Score—is not really what I would call a very good writer. And Richard Stark's editor is not what I would call a very good editor. Witness this passage:

The prowl car was a Ford, two years old, painted light green and white, with Police written in large letters on the doors and hood and trunk. The dashboard lights were green, and there was a small red dot of light, like a ruby, on the radio.

I don't know about you, but I am kind of disappointed that Stark didn't tell us whether the upholstery was contrast stitched or whether the heater vents were set to floor or bi-level. (Before you start second-guessing, none of the details Stark reports RE: the police car is relevant to anything in the book. For instance, the small red dot of light does not later blind a would-be assassin—or some other comparable hijinks. These used car ads are just written up by Stark, inserted into the text, and never referred to again.)

There is really no psychological depth in this book whatsoever. People merely do things and say things. Occasionally things they say allude to a hypothetical human emotion or a living, breathing subjectivity, but more often than not these allusions are of the explicitly useless varieties. (In one scene, for example, two accomplished safe 'juggers' argue about whether to blow up the safes or drill them. The fact that preferences exist seems to indicate that they are not wholly automatons. This is encouraging.) There is one character—named Grofield—who likes to quote Shakespeare and has a lot more personality than the rest, but still... it's only a relative difference and wouldn't count for much in any other book.

Another problem with Stark's writing style (at least in this outing) is that he doesn't have much sense of pacing and narrative momentum. In the first half of the novel, we hear the characters discuss their plans for a heist in specific detail. And in the second half of the novel, we see the characters actually execute this same plan, for the most part successfully and in keeping with the plan (until near the end). This redundancy seems to violate a commandment of Writing 101 to me. If I were Stark's teacher, I would have told him merely to explain the big picture of the heist at the beginning and then allow us to see the plan as it unfolds. (Again, a good editor probably should have edified him. But I keep forgetting that this is genre fiction; devoted fans probably find these tropes and weaknesses essential to the 'comfort food' quality of the books.)

Anyway... would you believe I still kind of enjoyed the book? It was pretty dumb, but I enjoyed it. It would be ideal for a short plane ride or a long wait in the doctor's office where the other reading options are Parenting and Golf Digest magazines.