The Outfit: A Parker Novel / by Richard Stark

Even for an author as well-published as he was, Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) had a lot of pseudonymns. Though to be fair, many of them were implemented during his early career when his offhand authorship of some pulpish, soft-porn titles discretely bore different pen names out of necessity. The Brooklyn native began writing stories as soon as he could spell and was publishing stories by his late teens. By the early sixties, his stories were being published in several minor serial publications using pen names like Alan Marshall, Ben Christopher or John Decker and it wasn't long before his taught, underworld style novels caught on. It was his Richard Stark novels featuring the gritty, amoral anti-hero Parker that quickly established the author as one to watch out for. With a restless, drifter-like persona and always a score to settle, Parker is the sympathetic criminal living in a world where crime and treachery is a given but survival isn't. Over 20 of the nearly 30 novels Westlake wrote as Richard Stark feature Parker as the protagonist and several have been adaptede or remorphed onto the big screen (different names and places) in movies like Point Blank with Lee Marvin or Mel Gibson's Payback. Elmore Leonard as well as Jim Thompson have said they owe much of their style and characterizations to Westlake and Parker. The Outfit has Parker trying to get back at the syndicate after it tries to kill him.

Some may say that crime doesn't pay. But for Parker, it's all he knows. The veteran thief and underworld player would've liked to think that his former employer, an influential crime syndicate referred to as the Outfit, would prefer to lay off him a while. After all, the ruthless way he'd cut ties with them had him thinking they'd leave him alone. But a late-night visit from an amateur hit man with a silenced .25 proved it hadn't. The guy was just a lackey and had had the unfortunate pleasure of breaking in on Parker in Miami during one of his business liasons. With little effort, Parker turns the tables on his would-be assassin and gets the guy to tell all he knows. An hour later and Parker's busting up a backroom poker game where a few former employees sit surprised that he's not dead. After shooting the man that framed him, Parker escapes and forms a plan of his own. Soon with the aid of few fellow rogues, Parker begins ripping off certain racetracks, casinos and 'establishments' owned by the outfit to settle the score.

When is the bad guy a good guy? Usually when all of the other characters are worse than he is. In this case it's more that he just lives by his own code. It's not that Parker is necessarily on a vendetta or out to get someone, it's more just that this is the only way he can achieve some balance in the world system he lives with. As in The Hunter, Parker's actions are usually provoked. His hand is forced by those who've double-crossed or harmed him in some way and the only real way to set things right is to enact swift, brutal revenge toward his enemies. There's an honorable bent to his actions even when he's heedlessly shooting a few bullets into someone in cold blood. There's also a callousness which denies any soulful type of real compassion. Parker doesn't really want a just or an honorable world, he just wants his piece of the pie. (MYS STARK)

The Town / Chuck Hogan

When it comes to movies based on books, I usually try to read the book beforehand. During that interim period between reading it and watching the movie, it's a nice feeling to have in my head the purest form of the story, just the words and my imagination. I have all the details straight from the mouth of the author. Movies are a different format altogether, I understand that, but in translating a book to the big screen, most of those details are left out. So I try to get them in before the movie version invades my impression of the story.

In the case of the 2010 film The Town, however, I ended up seeing the movie first. While this isn't a review of the film, which Ben Affleck directed and starred in, I do have to say that it was excellent. You expect it'll be just a standard action flick about a bunch of bank robbers but it turns out to be much more engaging and interesting than that. I liked it so much that when I saw in the credits that it was based on the 2004 book Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, my interest was piqued. I don't read a lot of crime fiction, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm glad I did. While the movie is overall quite faithful to the book (except at least one major divergence), it lets you get inside the heads to a much greater degree of Doug MacRay, the head of the bank-robbing crew, and Adam Frawley, the FBI agent determined to bring him down. (For a commentary on the movie's adaption of the book, visit "Adapt This: Ben Affleck’s ‘The Town’ vs. Chuck Hogan’s ‘Prince of Thieves'".)

By the way, the library has both the book (FIC HOGAN) and the movie (DVD T). Both are called The Town — don't look for the book under the title Prince of Thieves like I did!

Doug MacRay is a career criminal in his 30s who's finally reached the end of his heisting tether. He's tired of the life and tired of The Town — Charlestown, the roughshod neighborhood and culture that spawned him and his buddies. In the book, it's claimed that Charlestown has a reputation for being a "breeding ground for bank and armored car robbers" although this may likely be apocryphal.

The book opens with MacRay contemplating his life just before he and his crew pull off a morning bank job:

He wasn't there for thrills. He wasn't even there for money, though he wouldn't leave without it. He was there for the job. The job of the job, like the thing of the thing. Him and Jem and Dez and Gloansy pulling pranks together, same as when they were kids — only now it was their livelihood. Heisting was what they did and who they were.

The ever-erratic Jem insists they take the manager, Claire Keesey, hostage as a contingency plan. The mask-wearing crew releases her when they're a safe distance away, leaving Claire badly shaken by the entire incident. And MacRay finds he can't get her out of his head either. In trying to do some follow-up work to discern what she's told the FBI, he soon finds himself engineering a meet-cute and then courting her in a desperate attempt to escape his world.

Complicating matters further is Frawley, who finds himself drawn to Keesey as well even while he's investigating her.

The tension builds as both Frawley and MacRay play this cat-and-mouse game of outwitting each other, with the unwitting Claire (who's much more likable in the movie than in the book) at the center of it all. I found myself rooting for the increasingly conflicted MacRay, wanting him to succeed in pulling off his greatest score yet — breaking free of the life and the law.

Hogan, who lives outside Boston, brings a great deal of detail to his descriptions of The Town, making the place much more concrete for those of us who've never been to the City on the Hill. But what makes the book really crackle was the dialogue. It's like the characters chew up and spit out asphalt when they speak, their words sharp, grating and profane. (I'd give you an example, but it's a rare sentence that goes by without an f-bomb.) Who talks like that? I have no idea, but I think they really bring the characters and their environs to life. Hogan makes you believe it.

Part of what makes the The Town such a fun read is that it's hard to categorize it into any one genre. Here's a man, a bad guy on many counts, who is trying to salvage the good that remains in him. And he's trying to do it with one of his robbery victims. It sounds crazy, but once you're in MacRay's head, you not only understand, you support it. There's the budding romance between MacRay and Claire, the fraying bromance between MacRay and Jem and the hero-villain dynamic MacRay and Frawley.

Adventures in Art: Newer Crime & Mystery Fiction Involving Art and Antiques

The Good Thief’s Guide To Paris: A Mystery / by Chris Ewan

Charlie Howard leads quite the double life: he’s a crime writer who’s also a professional burglar. One evening following a Paris book signing, a drunken Charlie spills his secret to a fan and, with some encouragement, agrees to show him the tools of his other trade by breaking into what he thinks is the man’s apartment. But it isn’t. The apartment actually belongs to someone possessing a seemingly useless painting which Charlie’s new acquaintance wants to get his hands on. (MYS EWAN)

The Bellini Card: A Novel / by Jason Goodwin

In Istanbul in 1840, Yashim is a Turkish eunuch who works behind the scenes at the behest of the Sultan investigating any mischief that might arise within the diplomatic community. Recently Yashim and his Polish emissary friend Stanislaw Palewski have accepted an assignment to look into a missing 15th century portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror done by Giovanni Bellini. The painting, a prized relic of the Sultan’s court, is thought to be in Venice which is where Yashim and Stanislaw must travel to find it. (MYS GOODWIN)

Among Thieves / by David Hosp

Attorney Scott Finn thinks he’s just helping to acquit his client Devon Malley of involvement with a recent clothing store burglary. But when some of Malley’s cronies begin turning up dead, things start to look a little fishy until Finn learns that Malley was involved in an infamous art heist from twenty years ago in which over $300 million worth of paintings were stolen and never recovered. Now the hunt for a killer also becomes a search for the missing artwork. (MYS HOSP)

Our Lady of Immaculate Deception / by Nancy Martin
Meet Roxy Abruzzo, a Pittsburgh local who’s as sassy as she is savvy about art and antiques. The owner of Bada Bling Architectural Salvage, Roxy soon finds herself in quite the predicament when she steals a pricy sculpture from one of the city’s wealthiest residents, the recently murdered Julius Hyde. Though she has a perfectly good reason for the heist, her little escapade sets off a slew of mayhem as Roxy must outwit the police, the estate of the late Mr. Hyde and even members of her own family to escape prosecution. (MYS MARTIN)

Painted Ladies / by Robert B. Parker

Boston Private Investigator Spenser has seen a lot of strange cases, but nothing remotely similar to his current assignment: to provide security during a private ransom exchange at local art museum for a stolen painting. Having been hired by art professor Dr. Ashton Prince, Spenser suspects something’s amiss as soon as he meets the cagey old scholar and knows something’s up when the exchange mysteriously falls through and the painting remains stolen. (MYS PARKER)

Murder In The Abstract / by Susan Shea

An art preservationist and chief fund-raiser for the Devor Museum in San Francisco, Danielle “Dani” O’Rourke is hosting a gala one evening when a young artist falls to his death from Dani’s office window. With no other leads to go on, the police have fingered Dani as a chief suspect and without a solid alibi, having been indisposed at the time of the fall, Dani must find the real culprit before it’s too late. (MYS SHEA)

The Same River Twice / by Ted Mooney

What do a Parisian fashion designer, an American independent filmmaker and the Russian Mafia have in common? They’re all after a particularly pricey collection of smuggled Russian folk art. It’s a high-stakes game which turns deadly before it’s all through in this caper set in the early 1990’s just after the fall of the Soviet Union. (FIC MOONEY)

Ravens / by George Dawes Green

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The Boatwrights of Brunswick, Georgia are typical (though not stereotypical) southerners. Not establishment, not country club, not new money but not trailer trash. They're small towners with customarily demure small town ways. But like all Americans, they dream big. Especially mom Patsy, whose weekly devotion to the state lotto drawing is a religion unto itself, and college-age daughter Tara whose more modest ambitions include community college and moving out of the house. Dull-but-honest father Mitch, owner of a copy shop, and 8-year-old Jase tend to go with the flow orchestrated by their female counterparts. Their lives all change one Saturday night when Patsy's dream (unbeknownst to Patsy initially; Tara possessing the winning ticket) inconceivably comes true--to the tune of $318 million.

Friends since way back, Shaw and Romeo are two jobless nobodies escaping their dingy Ohio roots and heading south where ambitions of a better life in sunny Florida await their pending arrival. But when, by chance, they stop off at a gas station where a winning lotto ticket was recently purchased, their palm-tree dreams are delayed just a tad so they (particularly Romeo) can cook up an extortion scam to get at least a piece of all that money; of which the winner, being from this podunk nowheresville, would never know what to do with anyway. And so, using a some quite orthodox methods of finding their prey--a hint overheard at the gas station leading to some savvy cross-referencing of a few online business directories and social networks--the pair are in a position to execute what they feel is a convenient enough heist. But when their amateurish plan is put into motion, unforeseen variables inevitably create a far more complicated scenario than originally anticipated.
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Green, author of Caveman's Valentine, knows how to write characters. The story's four or five primary people are well-enhanced, each fleshed out enough to keep the reader interested and reinforce the authenticity in what's really an oft-conceived premise, providing welcomed simplicity and a straightforward method to executing the plot. Books about lottery winners can easily become outrageous or ridiculous, but Ravens executes the story with more practicality than most. Tara's reactions, especially, are refreshingly realistic, mirroring most people's vision of what they would do if it happened to them--calmly and discretely going about their business as if nothing special happened all the while excitedly plotting a long-subdued fantasy life. Part black comedy, part thriller and part love story, the book's multiple narrative style handles things well. What's intended to be a critical crisis situation comes across in pragmatic but unpredictable fashion, the reader in on things with a good feel for the primary players involved, but still pleasantly surprised by twists and developments along the way.

Heat (DVD) 1995 / a Michael Mann film; starring Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, John Voight & Ashley Judd

"You want to be makin moves on the street? . . . have no attachments, allow nothing to be in your life that you cannot walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner."

When a heist involving a hijacked armored truck is executed in broad daylight, LAPD members are suprised later on to find the cash and most of the currency lying untouched still inside the cab. It's an unusual but not unheard of situation, one which well-worn chief investigator Vincent Hannah instantly pins, explaining the meticulously conceived plan for the robbery (lucrative offshore equity bonds the target, not the cash), how it was pulled off and surmising on the likely party of adept, experienced criminals involved ("this look like gangbangers workin' the local 7-11 to you?"). A skilled veteran with a well-practiced team working under him, Hannah is soon able to 'make' the culprits, certain they're the same unit, headed by professional thief Neil McCauley, who've masterminded several similarly unsolvable crimes. But with little-to-no evidence and only vague information on the identities of those involved, Hannah can only hope for a break in the case or to somehow catch McCauley in the act.

Not too many career criminals make it to where Neil McCauley is; not just in terms of age and financial security but having attained the skill, discipline, wisdom and expertise required for undetectable, high-stakes holdups. For McCauley, what he does is every bit as painstakingly precise as those in the law-abiding professions, his approach to his work as polished, proficient and vocationally sound as anyone, perhaps more so. When the ultimate 'job' is laid out before McCauley and his gang of loyal though less-immersed veteran criminals, the decision is made to go forward--one last job and then out for good. Carefully, the necessary tactics are employed to not only execute the operation, but to evade the 'heat' which would inevitably bear down if plans were made known.

Heat was one of the last, good American movies. With quality performances all around from great actors in their prime, masterful storytelling by Michael Mann and engaging, authentic action sequences, it definitely rates high on the list of movies-to-see-before-you-die movies. Everything fits into a complex but well-conceived format, incorporating multiple plots and subplots all illuminating a good chunk of just why it is that everything must be the way it is: McCauley has to be a criminal for the same reason Hannah can't be anything other than cop. In one pivotal, almost legendary scene between Pacino and De Niro, each confesses to the other (and the audience) the movie's most fundamental maxim, that each needs the other: McCauley: "I don't know how to do anything else." to which Hannah replies "neither do I." Accessibility is another reason it works. The film's sizable range of characters and situations is matched with appropriate depth and substance, creating a movie with both mainstream appeal and iconoclastic intrigue. (DVD HEAT)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle / by George V. Higgins

Eddie Coyle is a foot soldier in a mid-level Boston crime syndicate. As a utility man and part-time gun-runner for a gang of small timers scoring the occasional bank heist, Eddie's world is the one he's known all his life. It's also the world which has him staring at 3-5 years in prison unless he can cop a plea deal. At 50, Eddie knows he's in no shape to do time, definitely not when his family--a wife and three kids--would have to go on welfare while he's in lockup. His only hope now is his "friends", the fellow hoods and small arms suppliers he routinely does business with. The insider knowledge of said individuals is the only thing Eddie has to trade for his safety. But Eddie's "friends" have their own safety in mind, especially as the heat bears down after a civilian was killed in their latest bank job. No fools themselves, they know Eddie's up against it. They know, just as Eddie does, that to save himself he must rat them out. Consequently, a decision must be made regarding not only his stake in the operation, but his permanent ability to discern and communicate certain information.

Once referred to as America's most prolific crime novelist, George Higgins has authored dozens of the spellbinding suspense thrillers. A prosecuting attorney with the DA's in Boston prior to becoming a full time writer, Higgins has been widely applauded for his ability to accurately portray authentic situations and realistic dialogue from the world of law and order. This book, one of his most popular, expertly conveys a broad spectrum of the criminal element existing in a typical metropolitan underground. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was made into an award-winning 1973 feature film (DVD FRIENDS) starring Robert Mitchum and Alex Rocco. The 2010 film The Town, adapted from the book by Chuck Logan, is basically the same story with only marginally differentiated character archetypes and plot points. Frankly neither's not really on par with Higgins' novel or the film with Mitchum. (FIC HIGGINS)