The Seventh

The Seventh by Richard Stark. 156 pages.

One of the early Parker novels (the seventh, acutally) written by the late Donald Westlake under the pseudonym that became almost as famous as his real name. This is the tale of a heist. No surprise there, heists are Parker's specialty. This one goes wrong, but that's no surprise either, someone is always messing up, or pulling a double-cross. Though you would think that the trail of bodies that Parker has left would convince his co-conspirators to do there best and put in an honest days' worth of dishonesty when they were working with  him. He's never all that concerned with anything that might come between him and what he stole. This particular heist involves a stadium full of football fans, back in the day when a lot more people were paying cash for their tickets. Parker's team of thieves consists of seven talented crooks and this time it all goes wrong after the job. When people start dying and the money disappears when everyone is supposed to be laying low, waiting until the heat dies down, Parker has to scramble to remain free and among the living. That doesn't leave him in a good mood. Formulaic, but fun and relentless.
Maplewood Library has this 2009 reprint of the 1966 noir classic.

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