24 Hours Later, I Finished THE MOURNER.

Book three of 2013. Pretty dumb, honestly. I have way too much to do and shouldn’t be reading a book in under 24 hours but…MY GOD.

Seriously. MY. GOD. 

These Richard Stark/Parker novels just keep getting better and better. And what’s insane is I see folks on GoodReads and Amazon saying that this is the weakest Parker novel and I just want to slap them and tell them that they literally have no idea what they’re talking about.

The prose in this book is just beautiful. It is some of the most wonderful bits of prose I’ve ever read in my entire life. And the supporting cast is wonderful and Parker is always wonderful and…just, for real, where have these books been all my life?

I want to go back to college so I can get a PhD in literature and write a thesis on Richard Stark and Parker. I want to defend my research and slap original 10-cent pulps onto the table and challenge the board to find me any American writer (fuck it, any WRITER) who was as consistent and beautiful as Westlake/Stark was while writing these novels.

It hurts me to read novels this good, because they just feel so effortless and it’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair.

Read it or un-follow. Seriously. 

Books Read in 2013

Swallowing the Earth
The Signal and the Noise
The Mourner