The Handle

by Richard Stark

Book Overview

In The Handle, Parker is enlisted by the mob to knock off an island casino guarded by speedboats and heavies, forty miles from the Texas coast. With double-crosses and double-dealings from the word go, Parker knows the line between success and failure on this score would be exactly the length of the barrel of a .38.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226771067
• ISBN13: 9780226771069
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

big business heist!

a unique parker entry in that he is working for the outfit! requested to rob a baron who owns a casino on an island in the gulf of mexico... sounds kind of james bond... but becomes original and more parker about half way through. anyway the plan gets laid out, grofield (the score) and salsa (the outfit) are in with him and then everything goes sour when a bunch more players are introduced and information gets out. things go over anyway and grofield ends up bleeding and stumbling across the mexican desert two days later and the money is lost! craziness! excellent book!

Another Great Parker Novel

I gotta disagree with the reviewer below-- this is one of the best Parkers. "The Handle" (otherwise known as "Run Lethal") is from the era of the real "classics" in the series, and it's terse and nasty and unpredictable. Yes, it features Grofield, an actor who moonlights as a heistman with Parker-- he's kind of the un-Parker, and some don't like him. He starred in four novels written by Stark/Westlake, and I agree that they're not quite up to the brutal standards of the early Parkers in the amorality stakes (but I still like them a lot). Here, Grofield doesn't dominate the book, just takes a role as a part of the string Parker's assembling. He's a pro, and Parker can count on him. The book works well as a prelude to "Butcher's Moon," where Parker and Grofield find themselves in a similar situation. Never read a Parker novel? Try this or any of the books from the Sixties: they're stripped-down, no-frills action novels, and Stark/Westlake does it better than almost anybody else.