Books by Richard Stark

Parker robs a rock concert, but the heist goes sour, and he finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Slayground turns the hunter into prey, as Parker gets trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters.

When he is double-crossed by his crew and left for dead, Parker is set on revenge. Payback has a new name: Flashfire is now a major film - 'Parker' - starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez.

Features the first appearance of Claire, who will steal Parker's heister's heart - while together they steal two million dollars of rare coins.

Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents.

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.

Parker goes toe-to-toe with the mob - hitting them with heist after heist after heist - and the entire underworld learns an unforgettable lesson: whatever Parker does, he does deadly.

Parker robs a rock concert, but the heist goes sour, and he finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Slayground turns the hunter into prey, as Parker gets trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters.

Parker robs a rock concert, but the heist goes sour, and he finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Slayground turns the hunter into prey, as Parker gets trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters.

The heist of a college football game goes sour, and the take is stolen by a crazed, violent amateur. Parker must outrun the cops - and the killer - to retrieve his cash.

Firebreak takes Parker to a palatial Montana "hunting lodge" where a dot-com millionaire hides a gallery of stolen old masters - which will fetch Parker a pretty penny if his team can get it past the mansion's tight security.

In Flashfire, Parker's in West Palm Beach, competing with a crew that has an unhealthy love of explosions; when things go sour, Parker finds himself shot and trapped - and forced to rely on a civilian to survive.

When his client is murdered, Grofield must take his chances against the mob in the perilous depths of the Puerto Rican rain forest. The client's husband, who thinks Grofield is the murderer, wants his revenge--in blood.

Parker is enlisted by the mob to knock off an island casino guarded by speed-boats and heavies, forty miles from the Texas coast.

Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, offers the third Alan Grofield novel of suspense. Grofield is a part-time actor, but the rest of the time he's a thief. But in this advernture, no one is giving Grofield the privilege of being asked if he'd like to heroically die for his country.

Alan Grofield has a knack for attracting damsels in distress. When Ellen Marie Fitzgerald comes in through his window, he dismisses the tale she tells him, until hoods come to find her, and their escape route from political intrigue may well be their last!

Knocking over a lucrative religious revival show, Parker reminds us that not all criminals don ski masks - some prefer to hide behind the wings of fallen angels. Backflash followed soon after, and it found Parker checking out the scene on a Hudson River gambling boat.

Parker works with a group of professional con men on his biggest job yet - robbing an entire town in North Dakota.

Parker goes under the knife, changing his face to escape the mob and a contract on his life. Along the way he scores his biggest heist yet: an armored car in New Jersey, stuffed with cash.