Doug mentioning Westlake's Grofield series reminded me of one
of the author's cleverest ideas. Two novels under his Stark
pseudonym have nearly the same opening paragraphs, a
description of an armored car robbery gone sour, with the
getaway car overturned and on fire. In "Slayground," Parker
escapes into a nearby amusement park closed for the winter.
In "The Black Bird," Grofield, one of Parker's crew, is
rescued from the burning vehicle by mysterious secret agents
who force him into an international caper. Westlake has come
up with an assortment of tricks and twists over the
years
-- like reusing the basic setup for the deadly serious Parker
novel "The Black Ice Score" in concocting the whimsical "The
Hot Rock." But the shared starting point of "Slayground" and
"The Black Bird" remains my favorite.
Dick Lochte
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 27 Oct 2004 EDT