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Parker’s first appearance: The Hunter (Pocket Books, 1962)
Parker begins!
He’s angry. He’s determined. He’s out for blood. And he’s got big hands!
He’s walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York, scaring motorists who glimpse him out the window as they drive by.
Later he will decide he wants the money that was taken from him. At the moment, however, he just wants revenge.
I’m always happy when my Pulp buddy Will Murray writes an A (Black) Gat in the Hand essay. He tackles cool stuff that never even occurs to me. And often which I knew nothing about. Will is the leading authority on Lester Dent’s Travis McGee predecessor (and you KNOW I love me some John D. MacDonald), Oscar Sail. But I had never even heard of the the maritime PI who follwed Sail: Cyrus Peace. So I’m thrilled to give you Will’s essay on another Dent PI: who, unfortunately, never made it to print. Read on, MacDuff.
An interesting sub-genre of modern detective fiction is the private detective who lives on and operates from a boat anchored somewhere along the Florida coast.
John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee is considered the most successful in this peculiar sub-genre. His houseboat, The Busted Flush, was moored off Fort Lauderdale.
(Editor’s Note – Click here for Black Gate’s John D. MacDonald coverage)
Others include the trio of troubleshooters who operated out of a Miami Beach houseboat in the 1960-62 Warner Bros. television show, Surfside 6––Dave Thorne, Sandy Winfield II, and attorney-turned PI Ken Madison.
In the first two installments of this series, we looked at the master criminal known as Parker, and at his creator, Richard Stark, the pseudonym Donald E. Westlake used when writing spare and stark but hard-hitting prose.
Now let’s look at some of the many attempts to bring Parker to a wider audience.
The novels are extremely popular with a segment of the population, and so studios and directors have come calling from time to time, with attempts to adapt the character and his stories to film.
But they never quite get Parker right.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)
So, as I type this, I am 99% moved from my apartment of the past six years, into the small house I bought a couple weeks ago (well, along with the bank…), which I happily call my writer’s bungalow. It has a small loft. I put in my desk (a cafeteria table) and as many bookshelves as I could fit in it. This is truly my happy place.
I started packing up my books in May. I’ve been crazy stressed between house hunting, house closing, and work. And packing. And I have felt oddly bereft, with my books in boxes. Unanchored. For someone who went through a divorce and moved out of his house in 2020 (like that wasn’t a hard enough year by itself!), this was unsettling. I couldn’t look over and see shelves of books. I couldn’t grab one for a Black Gate post.
I have over 2,000 physical books, and I moved all of them with my car, in about 55-60 boxes – yeah, that took a LOT of trips! I’m filling up my bookcases, gradually. Things like installing a washer and dryer, finding my socket set (I swear, that thing vanished), and an inconveniently timed out-of-town work trip, have taken precedence.
But my new house is slowly filling with my fiction and non-fiction collections. And THAT is helping me feel settled again. But in addition to the loft, there’s another terrific writing aspect to my bungalow. A (Black) Gat in the Hand fans (and long-time FB followers) may remember my former house had a terrific back deck, which led to Back Deck Pulp.
My apartment had a nice little concrete slab, facing a lot of trees, and thus was born the infrequent Back Porch Pulp.
Last time we discussed the character of Parker, Donald E. Westlake’s master thief and heist planner.
This time, we’ll look at why we’re talking about Parker at all, here in the hallowed spaces of this fine magazine.
Parker might seem like an odd fit. Allow me, however, to draw some parallels that will help to illustrate how and why the master criminal Parker fits in with classic sword and sorcery characters like Conan the Barbarian. For these two gentlemen have far more in common than one might guess.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)
I closed on a house a week ago Thursday and immediately began moving in, which is a long process for me. And I then had to go to Chicago for a work conference, doubling up my stress. So, today, you get an encore from season one of A (Black) Gat in the Hand. As a hardboiled fan, I find this essay from the legendary Black Mask editor, Joe ‘Cap’ Shaw. It offers his insights into writing for the Pulps. And it’s from an issue of Writer’s Digest, not Black Mask. I add some comments throughout. I think it’s a good read.
The hardboiled school was born in the page of Black Mask Magazine under the editorship of George W. Sutton, with Carroll John Daly’s “Three Gun Terry” (which I wrote about here…) and “Kings of the Open Palm,” and Dashiell Hammett’s “Arson Plus,” appearing in 1923. In 1924, Sutton resigned and circulation editor Phil Cody replaced him.
Cody pushed for more stories featuring Race Williams and the Continental Op, encouraged Erle Stanley Gardner to develop Ed Jenkins (‘The Phantom Crook’), and added Frederick Nebel and Raoul Whitfield to the magazine. Cody was spread too thin managing multiple publications, and he handed the reins to Joseph Shaw, a former bayonet instructor in the Army and an unsuccessful writer with zero editorial experience (I mean, sure, why not?).
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”
— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
1990 was quite the year for hardboiled and Noir on the big screen. Pacific Heights (Michael Keaton) came in as the 41st highest grossing movie of the year, with Revenge (based on the novella from the uber-talented James Harrison) was 83rd. Those are both solid Noirs.
At 107th was The Two Jakes – the long-delayed sequel to Chinatown. At 109th was Miami Blues, with Fred Ward as Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosely. I’ve read the books several times, but not seen the movie.
The 135th highest grossing movie is probably second only to The Maltese Falcon in the harboiled genre for me. It’s the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing. Starring the tastefully-last named Gabriel Byrne! At 155th is a remake of a Bogart flick, Desperate Hours. Mickey Rourke delivered a pretty good Noir.
But today, I want to talk a bit about a little gem that was pretty much overlooked and landed at 157th: After Dark, My Sweet. Sadly, it failed to earn back even half of it’s approximately $6.5 million budget. But this is a wonderful adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel.
It starts with director and co-writer James Foley, who has a mixed resume. He directed Sean Penn (married to Madonna at the time) in the very good Noir, At Close Range. He got the gig because he was producing Madonna’s videos. Sadly, the next movie he directed was Who’s That Girl. That’s the kind of thing that can end a career.
This week we kick off an occasional new series of reviews of the Parker crime novels by Richard Stark.
If you know Parker, you understand. If you aren’t familiar with him, trust me: You are in for a treat.
In installment two, I’ll explain why he’s worthy of being discussed in this august forum.
But first, let’s chat a bit about the character, his creator, and why he matters.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”
— Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
I don’t think I’ve done a Ten Things I Think I Think, for A (Black) Gat in the Hand. Huh. I guess we can rectify that today.
As I write this, all 2,000+ books which I own are boxed up. They will be moving to the house I close on later this week. They made up 55 boxes of books. There’s a loft that will be my writing room/home office, with bookcases spread out across a few other rooms.
It’s weird not being able to grab a book to read, or look something up. I feel like I’m in a book version of homelessness. Definitely strange. So, I think:
1 – PHILIP MARLOWE HAS STAR POWER
Philip Marlowe was born in 1939, when Raymond Chandler cobbled together parts from short stories featuring other detectives (I’m not exaggerating, I believe he used he word ‘cannibalized’), and wrote The Big Sleep. Marlowe novels were used for movies starring The Falcon, and Mike Shayne. But the character of Marlowe has compelled some big Hollywood names to play him. Such as Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, Elliot Gould, Robert Mitchum, Powers Boothe, James Caan, and Liam Neeson.
These are heavyweight male stars playing a character often from decades before. For the most part they’re good, though I definitely like them to varying degrees. Sam Spade, Race Williams, The Continental Op: similar big names in hardboiled fiction don’t have nearly the ongoing screen impact of Philip Marlowe. I ruminated on various Marlowe incarnations here.
“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” — Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep
I just finished the intro for Volume 4 of Steeger Books’ The Continental Op series. I’ll post it here after the book comes out, of course. But being in an Op mood, I wanted to bring back an Op mashup post which I did waaaay back in 2018.
Rory Gallagher passed in 1995. Wow – that’s 31 years ago now. An Irish blues-rock guitarist and singer, he is still revered throughout Europe. I don’t mean ‘popular.’ Think Eric Clapton status. There are statues of, and public spaces named after, him, in Ireland.
Of course musicians in America know of him. But he is not popularly-remembered here. Ask someone to name their ten favorite guitarists, and I don’t think you’ll hear his name very often.