Richard Stark: The Outfit (USA 2008)

From the Publisher:
You probably haven't ever noticed them. But they've noticed you. They notice everything. That's their job. Sitting quietly in a nondescript car outside a bank making note of the tellers' work habits, the positions of the security guards. Lagging a few car lengths behind the Brinks truck on its daily rounds. Surreptitiously jiggling the handle of an unmarked service door at the racetrack.

They're thieves. Heisters, to be precise. They're pros, and Parker is far and away the best of them. If you're planning a job, you want him in. Tough, smart, hardworking, and relentlessly focused on his trade, he is the heister's heister, the robber's robber, the heavy's heavy. You don't want to cross him, and you don't want to get in his way, because he'll stop at nothing to get what he's after.

Parker, the ruthless antihero of Richard Stark's eponymous mystery novels, is one of the most unforgettable characters in hardboiled noir. Lauded by critics for his taut realism, unapologetic amorality, and razor-sharp prose-style -- and adored by fans who turn each intoxicating page with increasing urgency -- Stark is a master of crime writing, his books as influential as any in the genre. The University of Chicago Press has embarked on a project to return the early volumes of this series to print for a new generation of readers to discover -- and become addicted to.

In The Outfit, Parker goes toe-to-toe with the mob -- hitting them with heist after heist after heist -- and the entire underworld learns an unforgettable lesson: whatever Parker does, he does deadly.

Richard Stark: The Outfit. A Parker Novel. University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 9780226771014 (September, 2008), 224 p., $14.00.

Richard Stark: The Outfit (USA 1998)

From the Publisher:
Count on this... The castle was in Buffalo and the king was in the castle. The car was in the pine woods of Georgia and Parker was on the move: slowly plotting his attack on the head of the powerful criminal outfit that had put a contract on his life. Armed with a new face and the old iron will, Parker is declaring coast-to-coast war. And after Parker's associates pull off twelve robberies in five days against Outfit targets, the man in the castle starts to get the picture. All except one part: with a hot car and a cold tenacity, Parker is coming after him...

Richard Stark: The Outfit. Warner Books, ISBN: 0446674672 (December, 1998), 224 p., $12.95.