The hard cold professional thief named Parker makes an attempt to pick up and launder the bank money he stashed in “Nobody Runs Forever” and found too hot to recover in “Ask the Parrot”. The third and final part of the story finds Parker at home with Claire as he decides to make a run back into the police roadblocks to pick up the boxes of cash stashed in the abandoned church. Along the way, he gains partner and kills a few people trying to take back what he stole. It is a perfect examination of the nuts and bolts of a life of crime.
The twenty four books in the Parker series show a change in the country and a change in the criminal world. The writing by Richard Stark aka Donald Westlake, is sharp and the plots reflect the tools, the technology and the mood of the time. While Parker had a run from 1962 to 2008, he never changed. Over the course of Richard Stark’s books, Parker the thief became more than a character. He ended his run as an archetype.