Parker Runs Through the 'Slayground'

Review of SLAYGROUND (Random 1971)
Author, Richard Stark

The late Donald Westlake is another one of those authors who's been praised to skies (especially after his death) and whose work I've been meaning to check out--again.

I can't remember which Westlake book it was that I tried first--something with Dortmunder in it, I think. It had to be Dortmunder because that was his comic character and Westlake was trying so hard to be funny. Ha ha, I said, and put the book down without finishing it.

Then I read all those glowing post-mortems on Westlake's career. I wondered, "Is it me? Maybe I should try another one."

I saw from the retrospectives that Westlake wrote under no less than three names. (Wow, I thought. It's hard enough just to write under one. And, if you read Wikipedia, it'll tell you he used many more.) And, under the name Richard Stark, he wrote about a hard-edged anti-hero, a cynical robber named Parker. And one Parker novel drew this blurb from Anthony Boucher: "Nobody tops Stark in his portayals of a world of total amorality." Wow, Anthony Boucher said that? I'm in.

SLAYGROUND starts with an armored-car robbery gone wrong. The getaway car in which Parker and his two cohorts flee the scene gets into a terrible crash. Parker grabs the cash and leaves the cohorts to their own devices. He runs for the nearest hiding place he can find--an amusement park called Fun Island. (Can you feel the irony yet? Don't worry, you will.) As he climbs the gate with the cash, he notices two men in hats and dark overcoats (it's winter and the park's closed) with two uniformed policemen--out there in the middle of nowhere. One of the cops is holding a long white envelope. And we all know what that means--it's not a love letter inside that envelope, it's cash, and that means that the cops are being bought and that means that the men in hats and overcoats are "wise guys." The Mob. And they notice Parker noticing them.

Parker realizes he's in big trouble when he finds out there's no other way out of the park. He can't go out the gate, because then the bad guys will nab him. So he knows they'll eventually be coming in for him. And he gets ready for this. He runs from one section of the park to the other--from New York Island to Alcatraz to Treasure Island and Voodoo Island and so on and so on--setting up traps (it doesn't say so, but it's pretty obvious that's what he's doing) in the funhouse the various boat rides and the submarine ride and so on and so on. And his circuit of the park is described in "over the river and through the woods" detail from about page 15 to about page 38, at which point, it's night and Parker is waiting and wondering why those guys haven't come after him yet. And I'm thinking bo-o-o-ring and I'm almost ready to put the book down. But I always give a book 50 pages. And the next 12 pages made all the difference.

That's when you get to meet the bad guys--the two cops and the two hoods--each of them interesting characters. You get to find out about each of their agendas and why they waited so long to come in. Once they're inside--let in by a hapless night watchman who ends up tied up, blindfolded and gagged in the watchhouse--all the fun starts. It starts with a bang and things seem to go well for Parker at first. But then things take a turn. And Parker suddenly finds himself in deep doo-doo.

The rest of the book is Parker versus the bad guys. Parker's movements continue to be described in great detail ("over the bridge, past the tiki hut, into the blacklight ride . . ."). I think the description is supposed to reflect the cold nature of his character--his sheer calculation--because Parker really hasn't much personality to speak of. Or maybe it was just the author's style. I don't know. Anyway, Parker is so thoroughly a man of strategy and action, without those attributes he'd be as colorless as the invisible man.

Yet, oddly, I got used to the cadence of description and the level of detail as Parker plays cat-and-mouse with the Mob. I got so caught up in the suspense, I stayed up late reading because I simply had to finish the section (the book's divided into four) that I'd started.

So did this book work for me? Well, yes. It was exciting, well-written, escapist fun. (I did blow through the description a bit, but still . . . I liked the story.) Would I agree with Boucher's assessment? Well, Boucher wrote it in 1966--before The Sopranos, The Wire and all sorts of other tales of amoral folk. I suppose, for its time, this was pretty harsh stuff. Nothing about the people in this book particularly shocked me in the amorality department, but it's not 1966 anymore, is it?

The book ends on a note that practically begs for a sequel. And there is the small matter of the hapless watchman. I wonder what happened to him?