- In honor of their 14th birthday (congrats!), Thrilling Detective presents The 14 Greatest Detective Novels of All Time: http://t.co/hTUQhBNG #
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News for week ending 2012-04-07 |
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News for week ending 2012-04-07
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I am not sure if this is the right place to ask, but in any of the Parker books did Handy McKay’s cafe ever burn down? I was just reading Bank Shot where Dortmunder steals a bank (that’s right the bank itself, it’s a trailer) and while on the run he hides at the sight of a burned down cafe called McKay’s Dinner. Now obviously this Westlake tipping his hand at his Parker series, but did McKay’s Dinner actually burned down in the Parker seris?
In Butcher’s Moon, Handy tells Parker that business at the diner has been poor lately, but there’s never any mention of it burning down. Of course, if business stayed poor, he might have torched it for the insurance. It really seemed like the restaurant business had lost some of its charm for him.
Is Handy even mentioned in any of the subsequent books? Parker seems to have given up on the whole concept of having a contact. People just call the house in Colliver Pond, which creates a constant danger of somebody tracking Parker down–not too safe for Claire either.
Best as I can recall, Butcher’s Moon is the last book we ever heard about Grofield or Handy, and I’ve often wondered why.
But as to Bank Shot, we know those books take place in a different universe, where Parker is a fictional character. So that was just an in-joke. Bank Shot was published about two years before Butcher’s Moon, but for all I know was written around the same time, or just shortly before. Maybe when he was writing Bank Shot, Westlake had already decided to dispense with Handy McKay as a supporting character in the Parker books, and the burnt diner is in the way of an epitaph.
Not that I recall.
Apparently Travis mcGee is a fictional character in the Parkerverse, as I remember in one of the Parkers a character is seen reading a Travis McGee novel. And I guess Dan Kearney is real in the Parkerverse since he interacts with Parker in Plunder Squad and Gores’ Dead Skip.
Yet doesn’t Dortmunder interact with Kearney in Drowned Hopes and 32 Cadillacs?
And yet Parker is a fictional character in the Dortmunderverse?
I’m confused.
Westlake and Gores were friends, and they liked doing this–good cross-promotion–Gores’ book sales must certainly have benefited to some extent. But once Westlake was taking his quarter-century long break from Parker, he could play this mutually beneficial game by bringing in his other most popular character (who probably is better known than Parker).
He obviously didn’t feel like the Dortmanderverse was a place where continuity had to be observed all that closely.
It gets even more confusing when you realise that there’s a character in Dead Skip whose favourite author is Richard Stark, implying that in Dan Kearney’s universe, Parker is both real and fictional.
Having now read all four Grofield novels, what confuses me is that apparently everything that happened to Parker between The Handle and Slayground–with five Parker novels between those two–took place in a little over a year. Because in The Blackbird, which is set immediately after the events of Slayground, that’s how much time we’re told has passed since the events of The Damsel, which begins no more than a month or so after the events of The Handle.
And from the grave, I hear Westlake’s ghostly voice intoning “Eh, sue me.”
;)
By the way, are there any other connections in the Dortmunders/Parkers? I vaguely remember one concerning Stan Devers…?
You do realize Westlake is laughing at us from beyond the grave for trying to figure this **** out, right? ;)
The only book I’ve read by Gores is Come Morning, which I liked quite a bit. Haven’t read any of the DKA books. I skimmed through Dead Skip at my library just to see the Parker passages, I’ll probably pick up a copy because I’m a completist.
Dortmunder may–I’m not even sure about that–be better known, but believe me, we Stark fans are a rabid bunch. I’ve come across a few Stark fans who are actually irritated that the Dortmunder books even exist. I guess they feel they distracted the master from cranking out new Parkers (which we all know is BS).
Dortmunder’s a nice enough chap.
The books are fun.
But they don’t compare to Stark.
I’ve only read The Hot Rock, so far. Had me doubled over more than once. A good laugh is its own justification. I can easily see why they’re more popular.
We all have days when we feel like Dortmunder (most days, in fact).
Anyone who ever thinks he’s like Parker is kidding himself. For reasons I trust I have already made abundantly clear elsewhere.
That we agree on. Not because I neccessarily subscribe to the theory Parker has the spirit of a wolf–I don’t, at least not in the literal sense. Man, Chris, you must have been smokin’ some powerful Ganja when that theory popped in your head!
But I’m sure there are more real life Dortmunder type-thieves than Parkers. For my two bits, I imagine something happened in Parker’s childhood that severly stunted his emotional life. Maybe emotion isn’t even the proper word. In other words, Parker strips life to the bare essentials, at least when doing a job. Even with simple talking, it has to be striped down to a basic information exchange, no pointless opinions or funny stories. He’s almost like a parody of Dragnet’s Joe Friday–just the facts!
No, I’m afraid most real thieves aren’t nearly as capable as Dortmunder. Lucky for them that real life law enforcement doesn’t live up to its fictional counterparts very often either.
Never smoked pot in my life. I rarely get drunk. And I think you misunderstood my article rather badly, but could I just inquire as to why you didn’t express that misunderstanding on the actual thread for that article? It’s not like I was standing next to you with a sharp object in my hand, or even a blunt object. C’mon man, I was spoiling for a good fight there, itching to defend my thesis from all comers, and you guys all wimped out royally! Not for the first time, I am moved to note that fans of crime fiction are often a bunch wilting violets in real life. :D
As to your explanation–seriously? You’re going to resort to some dime store Freudian claptrap to explain a highly intelligent and supercompetent individual who has a cyclical sex drive, no hobbies or interests, no religious or political opinions, no interest in fiction of any kind, a good understanding of human psychology, but absolutely no sense of guilt, by saying he had a rough childhood? Who the heck didn’t? We are what we are because we’re born that way–the rest is detail. Even the most seemingly inhuman sociopath is deeply and recognizably human in the way he or she deals with his or her dysfunctions. What makes Parker so exciting–what makes you respond to him the way you do–is that he’s heeding the beat of a very different drummer from everyone else on two legs.
I went over that quite thoroughly–no existing psychiatric boilerplate explains Parker. Nor does calling him a robot. He has emotions, they function perfectly well for his purposes, but they’re not human emotions. Calling him a wolf is a metaphor (OBVIOUSLY), but the deeper I went into it, the better it worked. Westlake repeatedly hinted that Parker was something other than human–that his consciousness was more primal, animalistic, predatory–and not in the “To Catch a Predator” sense of the term. Real predators only take what they need, never kill without a reason. No real human killer has ever risen to the level of a true predator.
If you want to respond, respond to my ARTICLE, if you please. This thread is actually some weeks older, and has taken a few too many twists and turns, you ask me.
;)