Bad people making bad decisions. That is the most succinct way to describe Richard Stark’s novel “The Hunter”.
Stark was one of many pseudonyms for the prolific crime/noir author Donald E. Westlake. In the days before James Patterson and Nora Roberts it was considered bad business to “flood the market” with more than one book by a particular author per year. Hence, writers like Westlake, who wrote three or four books a year, would release them under pen names. Richard Stark was the name he primarily used for his “Parker” series, of which “The Hunter” is the first book.
“The Hunter” centers on Parker (no first name is ever given), a con artist, thief and heist man who is out for revenge on the people who double-crossed him on his last job and left him for dead. It doesn’t matter that he was secretly planning on double-crossing them and they turned the tables on him before he could carry out his plan. He pursues them with a single-minded relentlessness, taking on a huge organized crime operation in the process.
“The Hunter” is pitch black, even for a noir novel. None of the characters have any redeeming qualities and Stark does not try to make them sympathetic in any way. Parker in particular is a remorseless thug. He leaves a long trail of collateral damage to innocent and not so innocent bystanders along the way and doesn’t seem to particularly care. In the most disturbing scene of the book for me, Parker breaks into a beauty parlor to stakeout the mob hotel across the street and in the process; knocks out the manager who was closing up, ties her up and gags her and inadvertently kills her when she suffocates from a asthma attack. He only notices she is dead when he contemplates raping her.
I’m not one of those people who need’s to like or identify with the characters to find a book interesting or worth reading. There really is no way to identify with the Parker, unless you’re a sociopath, but that doesn’t make it any less compelling, especially for fans of crime fiction/noir.
At the time it was written, 1961, I would think that it was rare or unusual for the protagonist to essentially be the antagonist and you can see the echo's and influence of "The Hunter" in much modern crime fiction. Stark paints a fascinating portrait of not only a place and time, but of a criminal underworld that is dank, dirty and sloppy. Parker is not so much smart as he is cunning. For as resourceful as he is in pursuing his objectives, he make tons of stupid mistakes that come back to haunt him. It is noir, after all, and nobody gets what they want.
Stark proves himself a master of the genre. His prose is taunt, clipped and hard-boiled. Like his characters he doesn’t mess around and gets right to the point, keeping the reader in the immediate moment and filling in the details later with the old noir standby, the flashback. The story moves fast and when the dust settles Parker is left with little except a trail of destruction behind him and an opportunity for continued misadventures.
“The Hunter” has been adapted for the screen twice, once as “Point Blank” with Lee Marvin and as “Payback” with Mel Gibson. Neither movie does the book justice. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re a fan of dark noir/crime fiction then go straight to the source material.
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