If Deadly Edge had a subtitle, The Return of Claire might be apt. After her virtual disappearance in the preceding novel, über-thief Parker’s girlfriend resurfaces in a big way with a steel-reinforced backbone even Parker can’t bend.Two wild and crazy guys take on Parker and his cohorts from a newly-completed job. Initially their motive’s unclear other than perhaps they wanted to avoid the upfront risk and steal someone else's robbery score. No matter. They’re a momentary problem to be handled and as usual, Parker does not mess around.While I enjoyed watching Claire “cowgirl up” and try to stand her ground, I had a few quibbles regarding certain plot points:First, one of the young lowlifes who bring trouble to Parker uses a hallucinogenic administered via sugar cube which the narrative states isn’t LSD. I believe PCP was becoming popular at the time but Stark doesn’t mention it overtly and quick googling doesn’t reveal it to be commonly consumed from a sugar cube. Whatever, it seems unlikely to me that a person tripping out regularly would have it together enough to confront a series of professional hoodlums. Additionally, Stark appears to suggest that excessive drug and alcohol use directly leads to the type of over-the-top torture and brutality depicted in the book. I know unimaginable violence is often associated with gangsters and drug cartels, but Deadly Edge’s antagonists aren’t said to be in those lines of work. IMO, there’s not a meaningful explanation for their sadistic behavior besides simple shock effect.Unfortunately, the only thing the thug duo truly has going for it is youth and they’re no match for Parker's superior strategizing skills honed through decades of criminality. But Claire—never drawn as much of a simpering wimp—begins to come into her own and proves herself an excellent if not ideal partner for her man.
This is another of Richard Stark's (Donald Westlake's) Parker series that has been out of print and unavailable for a good number of years. Happily, the University of Chicago Press has recently published a new edition of the book with an introduction by Charles Ardai, the man behind the Hard Case Crime series.The basic framework of the novel will be familiar to most fans of the series. Parker and a crew of men execute a carefully planned heist, in this case at a rock concert. Then, almost immediately, things go awry and Parker has to spend the rest of the book extricating himself from the resulting jam, hoping to get away with both his life and his share of the loot. As always, it's great fun to watch Parker at work both on the caper and in the aftermath.At this point in the series, Parker is settling into a relationship with Claire, the woman he met a few books earlier in The Rare Coin Score. After living in hotels, Claire has found a house for them to share, which she hopes will be a haven for Parker between jobs. This is important to her, less so to him. Parker "didn't think about houses, they had as much to do with his life as apple trees." But Claire is important to him and so he feigns more enthusiasm than he actually feels.This book is unique in the series, because a good portion of it is told from Claire's perspective. But it's an interesting approach, and given the importance that Claire assumes in Parker's life and, thus, in the series, it's nice to have this more complete introduction to her character.A number of fans of this series have been extremely frustrated through the years because these books have been impossible to find. But with the books published by the University of Chicago Press over the last couple of years, the entire series is at long last available again. All of Parker's (and Richard Stark's) fans are enormously grateful.
Parker hits a rock concert, his group slipping in and out without a mishap, even though a man short as one, the oldest member decided he couldn't do it anymore. When they got to the safe house, they find the old man dead in the house.What was he doing there? And who had killed him?Nothing happens and, after a few days, the four split their take and split.Parker heads for the New Jersey home Claire had bought and settles in until Handy McKay calls him one night with the message that one of them, Keegan, had called and asked for his number. McKay gave it to him and now thinks maybe that wasn't a good idea.Parker heads to Keegan's home, only to find him dead, nailed to the wall, and showing signs of torture.He immediately calls Claire and warns her away, aas much as he can on an open phone line. But she refuses to leave, so he tells her to get all his things out immediately, pretend ignorance, she's a phone contact only, when they show up(he'd figured it was two men).Parker tracks the next one of his partners down and finds him shot dead. On the phone, subtly, Claire gets the point across that they have her and he pretends to be across the country and sets a meet for the next night.Then he heads for home to do some hunting and find an explanation for it all.
—Randy
Sadistic hippies whacked out on LSD versus Parker? Yes, please!Do you know those episode of "Dragnet" with Blue Boy, the acid fried freak? Parker's up against two of him, but a Blue Boy who wouldn't mind nailing a person to the wall and torturing them to death with a lit cigarette. Fucking Hippies!!! On paper, or by reading what the novel was about, I thought this would be one of my favorites, and in theory it is, but somewhere along the way I admitted to myself that this book wasn't bad, but it wasn't awesome either...(break to help customers)... I think this book would have been better if there had been more hippies and more killing of hippies. Like Parker and his buddies decide to rob a big outdoor rock festival in the Catskills. The heist goes off without a hitch until the wheelman in Parker's crew runs over some dirty hippie's dog (the dog actually committed suicide, no longer wanting to live in the back of a microbus with unwashed stoners). The hippies collectively get all angry, and think that the wheelman was acting 'very, uncool, man...' and the only way Parker can get the himself and the money to safety is to use a Gatling gun to mow down hippies and cut a path to freedom for him and his partners. I'd call it something like, Bloodstock. Maybe, I shouldn't have said anything and made this the 2011 Novel-writing-Month novel I'd write. But I probably would have forgotten about this idea by the time November 1st rolls around.
—Greg
Well, this was a dandy one. The basic Parker formula is intact: robbery followed by betrayal (though not by any of the actual heisters, for a change, but instead by the grandson of one, who wants to get his psychotic mitts on the dough), followed by the inevitable Parker coldly obsessive tracking down and eliminating of those who dare to screw with him--and, in this instance, his "woman," Claire. Claire comes across as a bit of a bonehead in this one, but not so much so that she's unendurable, and overall the book offers interesting depth and insight into character usually lacking in the series. The deadly edge of the title is Parker's pragmatic sociopathy, his willing ness to subortdinate all other considerations to his main goal, which is always survival first, followed by getting the money. Anyway, fans of hard-boiled, clever crime books should find this one more than engaging.
—Dominick
