Back from the dead

Over the more than 40 years that Richard Stark has been writing his Parker noir novels, heavyweights have lined up to praise his work: Booker-winner John Banville called the books “among the most poised and polished fictions…of any time,” and Guggenheim fellow Luc Sante called them “a brilliant invention.” And yet, if you wanted to quantify how much these champions have done for their pet cause, neither of them would stack up to someone you’ve likely never heard of: Levi Stahl, publicity manager at the University of Chicago Press.

Donald Westlake—under the pseudonym of Richard Stark—began writing the Parker novels in 1962, with publication of The Hunter, a grisly and propulsive noir about a crook who seeks revenge after his partner-in-crime and his wife double cross him. Stahl, a rabid mystery fan, had read praise of the Parker novels but only recently decided to check them out.

“Last fall, I tried one,” he says. “They’re like candy. I read one, and suddenly I’m reading a dozen. I read all of the ones I could get my hands on, but the early ones were out of print and surprisingly hard to find.”

Stahl went to Maggie Hivnor, the press’s paperback-reprints editor, and suggested they get the books back into print. Hivnor then read a few and had the same reaction as Stahl, and the two of them took their enthusiasm to the press’s board. And now, a year later, University of Chicago Press has rereleased the first three Parker novels, The Hunter, The Man With the Getaway Face and The Outfit.

In The Hunter, Westlake introduces his antihero, Parker, a man so badass he doesn’t need a first name. A prodigiously strong and sharp criminal, Parker reacquaints himself with New York City after spending time in a California prison. Parker embarks on a vengeful path for Mal Resnick, the man who cut him out of his last job, either scaring or beating the daylights—or both—out of the Outfit’s worker bees in his way. Westlake immediately sets up the world of his novels as an amoral underground, where someone like Parker can be the reader’s rooting interest. But the moral vacuum occurs so naturally, no one seems to notice what’s missing. There’s also something oddly nostalgic about reading a ’60s novel involving payroll heists and easily forged driver’s licenses. Crime was so much more colorful before criminals had to have comp-sci degrees.

But The Hunter’s title sheds the most light on what Westlake is up to. Whereas most mysteries concern the victim, seeking justice or answers to what happened to “the hunted,” Westlake inverts that paradigm. Parker is both the bad guy and the good guy. In The Man with the Getaway Face, Parker undergoes surgery to change his face after the mob puts out a hit on him. And in The Outfit, as the title suggests, he takes on the syndicate, out-heisting them at every step.

“There’s something so wonderful about the efficiency with which he writes,” Hivnor says. “At one point, he describes an old bar in upstate New York, and he says, ‘It was called The Lido, but it shouldn’t have been.’ He doesn’t waste words.”

What’s most interesting, perhaps, is that the University of Chicago Press has resurrected these classics of the genre. Though most of the press’s front list is devoted to more academic titles, it’s able to use its paperback reprint list to diversify. Westlake is one of crime writing’s most revered practitioners, and yet his important—and popular—work had fallen out of print. We tried to talk to Hivnor about the role of a university press in serving the public good, acting on an archival instinct to keep the Parker novels on the shelves. But she was having none of it.

“To be honest, we’re doing them because they’re so fun,” she says, and echoes Stahl. “Once you read one, you want to read a dozen.”

The three Parker novels are out now. University of Chicago Press will reprint another three in the spring.