When Parker was on the run from police dogs and chanced upon a rabbit hunter who unexpectedly aided him, he should have known the rabbit hunter had motives of his own. Now Parker's teaming with him to rob a racetrack. Can Parker get away with the robbery while a manhunt is going on for him?Ask the Parrot was one of the better books of the new era Parker. Parker is his ruthless self, evident in the way he handles most of the supporting cast. Unlike some of the more recent Parker books, Parker doe...

Ask the Parrot, #23 of the 24 Parker novels from Richard Stark/Donald Westlake, is the continuation of the story begun in Nobody Runs Forever, to be concluded in Dirty Money, the last of 24 Parker novels Stark wrote. It begins where that last book ended, with Parker running in the woods, with bloodhounds barking in pursuit. What happens next? Parker meets a rabbit hunter, Tom Lindahl, who also happens to be a whistleblower with a grudge against the racetrack that fired him. Lindahl figures out P...

Ask the Parrot is Parker novel #23, the second in a three part series, bookended by Nobody Runs Forever (#22) and Dirty Money (#24). Taken together, Richard Stark's Nobody Runs Forever, Ask the Parrot and Dirty Money is comparable to one of those 700-page doorstop novels by Tana French or Jo Nesbø - for marketing reasons, a publisher could even combine all three in one hardback edition. This to underscore the three novels are best read in sequence. At the end of Nobody Runs Forever, Parker is in...

Depending on your philosophy--and there seems to be as many as there are people who write novels--the middle appears to be the most difficult part of the process. In the beginning you have all these great characters and concepts and situation you are excited to explore, and at the end you have the thrill of seeing all your efforts come together in a satisfying conclusion. But the middle. . . . That’s where things tend to stall. Apparently the same theory also applies to trilogies. And that’s how...

Picking up immediately from Nobody Runs Forever, Parker is being chased by the police and dogs when he runs into a local man, Tom Lindahl, who helps Parker avoid the police. Turns out that Tom was fired from his job at a racetrack because he "outed" their illegal political contributions. Tom wants revenge, and asks Stark to help him rob the place. In the meantime, Parker does his best to blend in, but Lindahl is known as a hermit and nobody believes he has an old friend. The town is really borin...

"In the first place," Parker said, "let's get rid of that thirty-six hour fantasy of yours. You can't go on the run, because you can't hide. Where do you figure to be, thirty-six hours later? Oregon? Where do you sleep? Do you go to a motel and pay with cash? A credit card places you, and the law by then is watching your accounts. So do you pay cash? The motel wants your license plate number. Oh, from New York State?""Jesus.""Anywhere you go in this country, everybody's on the same computer.

Redux: Parker and Backwoods BumpkinsReview of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (October 2008) of the original Mysterious Press hardcover (2006)This was a "re-read" after my read of the University of Chicago paperback edition earlier this year. The audiobook was narrated by William Dufris instead of series regular Stephen Thorne and the performance was fine, if not especially voiced in a hardboiled manner. The performance of the parrot's squawky voice was especially excellent though. A...

Notes:Currently on Audible PlusI've been enjoying the way Stark updated the series and moved it forward in time with the development of computers, cyber security, etc. There's one more book on AP and that'll be the end of the series for now. This installment was a good example of fubar. Everything that can go wrong, did go wrong. LoL

I was actually happy when this ended, which is a shame. I love the Parker novels, at least the first dozen or so that I've listened to. This one lost it, though. It was long, needlessly padded out with marginal motivations from many of the characters. (view spoiler)[ The money was marked yet the brothers were after Parker to get it? (hide spoiler)]Worse, this is another case where the editing team of one of the big publishers weren't any better than self-published novel. There were sloppy logica...

Ok. Not as good as some of the others, but I still enjoy reading Parker.Parker is in the woods fleeing after a robbery. A local guy Tom sees Parker and realizes he’s one of the robbers. Tom wants Parker to help him rob a racetrack. Tom introduces Parker to other locals telling them Parker is a friend visiting. Parker joins the locals as they hunt for Parker. It’s pretty good watching Parker interact with various local people.Minor complaint. A security guard sees car lights at an unusual time. H...

The Parker series heads into uncharted almost YA territory in the simplistic and surprisingly two dimensional 'Ask The Parrot'. Being a huge fan of Stark's thief amongst thieves, Parker, I was disappointed by this latest venture. Parker is on the run, his accomplices looks down and out and he's on his last legs - only to find a savior in the form of a disgruntled former race track employee who see Parker as an opportunity for payback. While I enjoyed some of the traditional man on the run elemen...

Parker is on the run from a failed bank job. The money is lost; one of his partners has been caught, and the other is on the run as well. Parker is fleeing up a hill, hoping to find some avenue of escape on the other side. The cops are right behind him and the hounds are baying at his heels. He finally reaches the top of the hill and finds a man with a rifle waiting for him...Richard Stark's Parker series has always been one of my favorites and this was a good addition to it. Like most of these

Parker and Backwoods BumpkinsReview of the University of Chicago Press paperback edition (September 2017) of the original Mysterious Press hardcover (2006)Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.Ask the

Parker is a great bad guy. He's in a tough spot running from the law, but he knows how to keep his cool. Great story.

Wow. I haven’t blown through an entire book in a single sitting in quite a while. It wasn’t until I put “Ask the Parrot” down that I realized I had read it cover-to-cover without a break. I guess I liked it. This one gets a full “4”.This is a very late Parker book (2006), coming a few years after “Firebreak” (previous entry read & reviewed.) Although it has some of the “mellowness” in "Firebreak", I thought this book was closer to the much older book I've read (“The Man With the Getaway Face”) i...

It’s been ten years since Donald Westlake left us, and it’s a loss that’s still deeply felt for those of us with a taste for pure throwback noir novels. Westlake was the creator and author, under the pseudonym Richard Stark, of a series of novels featuring the enigmatic professional criminal known only as Parker; while the character was popular enough to spawn a huge number of imitations (and a series of loose film adaptations, none of which, with the exception of 1967’s Point Blank, really mana...

Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) should be studied at all writing schools. To write a Parker novel is more of a math problem than a series of moments inspired by passion. The ultimate anti-hero, Parker represents a professional who will do what he has to do, to survive or excel in his line of the profession - which is being a professional criminal. Parker is in a pickle, somewhere in the backwaters of a small community, avoiding an arrest, he teams up with a hermit of sorts, who is still sore abo...

it is a cool thriller, not the best in Parker adventures but ok. there is a funny ending like a cut, not a real ending. Parker finished the job, stealing money, see his so called partner disappear and that's is. but this is Stark style. no sentiments, cold, straights only motives.

It's always a good thing when I find a Parker novel I may have missed. It's always a quick and very enjoyable read. In this one, Parker is on the run from a bank robbery, and is being chased by barking police dogs, when he is approached by a local stranger who takes him to his secluded home. And yes, in that home is a parrot who doesn't speak. Yet. What can I say, I'm a fan.

Another strong outing from Stark, though I did find some of the subplots in the middle of the story to be somewhat unnecessary and felt to some degree as filler. But as it's not a particularly long story even with these additional subplots, it didn't do much to dull my enjoyment.

Ask the parrot, why don'tcha!Possibly the Parker book with the strangest title, this novel is nonetheless just as well-written as any other in the series. The suspense level is high and constant throughout the book. Parker is on the run, hiding from the law following the events of Nobody Runs Forever, there are roadblocks all over, sheets bearing his likeness (or an artist' s rendition of it) are distributed to anyone and everyone, and yet here is Parker, cool as a cucumber. He even joins a sear...

This story focuses on the trail of a bank robber on the run. One of his accomplises gets caught spending the new marked bills they stole and Parker gives up on the idea of getting his share of the stolen money.He runs into the barrel of another man's gun while fleeing the search dogs. The other man, Lindahl, has his own robbery plans which are based on revenge. Seeing Parker as an experienced bank robber, Lindahl talks him into helping pull off his own heist.It's a pretty cool story, except ther...

Parker is on the run after a failed heist and he gets rescued by a disgruntled former employee of a racetrack. This is a different style of story that puts Parker in a situation that he is on the run from the law while he is at the same moment involved in a new heist that would bring him safety and money.Another great story about Parker and his attitude towards the world where he takes what he wants and does so with great care for him selves and his allies.Another great entry in the rejuvenated

This was the audio book, right at 5 hours. The reader was excellent. I really like Donald Westlake, aka Richard Stark, but this one wasn’t one of his best. It did help my three days traveling a couple hours each day. There wasn’t much suspense in this one, but I had to admire Westlake’s humor in it.

Like all the Parker books, an easy, enjoyable read, full of twists and turns. The challenge Stark faces is keeping it fresh over twenty books into a series. This one creaks somewhat. While it does avoid some of the Parker conventions, it rests on a central implausibility--Parker, who ended the last book on the run, just happens to run across a guy with a grudge against a racetrack, who decides to help him in exchange for Parker's help robbing the track. One can go with it, but it does strain cre...

Ask The Parrot is the 23rd novel of the 24 novel strong Parker series by Richard Stark, who is the most well-known of Donald Westlake's psuedonyms. Westlake has over the fifty-plus years he has professionally written assumed seven or more psuedonyms for a variety of reasons, but everyone knows Stark is Westlake and vice versa. Westlake has written over one hundred books.Parker, who has no first name, is a professional criminal. He robs. He does bank jobs. He does armored car jobs. He is known to...

There are some scenes in this novel that could have been cut or edited; the entire action of the book takes place within about a five mile radius of an upstate NY town. Parker spends much of his time hiding his true identity from the locals, given he is on the lam and police sketches of him and his crew have been distributed to the townspeople. Ironically, even though he arouses suspicion among a makeshift posse that could be categorized as the 'gang that couldn't shoot straight,' and in fact is...

.Ask the Parrot: A Parker Novel • by Richard Stark (First published 2006, less than 300 pages. The author Donald Westlake, 1933 to 2008, wrote the Parker series using the pen name Richard Stark.) OVERVIEW:Racing through the backwoods of Massachusetts and on the verge of being taken down for one of the biggest and most disastrous bank heists the state has ever seen, Parker runs into the barrel of a gun... A quiet and angry recluse with only a silent parrot for company...Tom Lindahl saves Parker f...

I resented the beginning of this novel, was bored by the ending, and was thoroughly entertained in between. Ask the Parrot begins exactly where Nobody Runs Forever ends, with Parker in dire straits, and the defusion of the situation is totally, lazily deus ex machina. The end of the novel dissolves into a gun battle, which I always find to be a particularly anticlimactic way for a Parker novel to wind down, especially given my confidence that Parker is not going to die. In between, which is most...

This one is second-to-last in the long-running PARKER series. It's basically just a continuation of the previous novel, NO ONE RUNS FOREVER, and deals with the aftermath of the heist in that book.Parker runs into a disgruntled track employee who agrees to help Parker avoid the authorities in exchange for helping him rip off his former employer.There's lots to enjoy here, and Stark/Westlake certainly entertains. This one continues directly in the next, and final, book in the series, DIRTY MONEY.