The Projection Booth podcast covers Point Blank

I’m a little late to this, but back in November 2021, Mike White of Cashiers du Cinemart magazine covered Point Blank on the Projection Booth podcast with guests Jedidiah Ayres and friend of the site Andrew Nette. Mike and I go back to before this site existed (which as a lot of you know, is […]

Not Quite Parker?: Trouble Man (1972)

Note: For those of you who are new here, the “Not Quite Parker” category is where I look at pastiches of, homages to, references to, and rip-offs of the Parker novels. 

Mild spoilers, but this is a pretty typical crime and blaxploitation flick, so nothing in it is all that unpredictable.

Robert Hooks plays […]

IDW Publishing announces Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition: Last Call

I’m very excited about this. IDW Publishing has just announced Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition: Last Call.

For those of you not familiar with the first Martini Edition, it was released in 2011 and was a massive, and I mean massive slipcased volume containing the first two of Darwyn Cooke’s already-classic comic book […]

Added to the cover gallery: A Portuguese edition of The Hunter

Rififi (Portugal) 19??

Title translation: Hunter of Men

 

Added to the cover gallery: A Brazilian edition of The Hunter

Publisher unknown (Brazil) (????) (English: Point Blank)

Translation of cover text:  Top: “Special Mystery Edition” / Subtitle: “The barbarous vengeance of a betrayed and robbed man!”

This Brazilian cover is courtesy of reader Cesar. Over the coming days, I’ll be rolling out a number of Portuguese-language covers that he clued me in to.

[…]

Inside the new hardcover edition of The Hunter

 

As you may not be aware because I did not give it nearly the coverage I should have, Darwyn Cooke and IDW Publishing have launched a companion line to their highly successful line of comic book adaptations of the Parker novels. They will be reprinting the original Richard Stark novels, each with […]

When… (fifty years of Parker)

Why is the cover of that bit of bureaucracy posted above?

Because that’s the bit of bureaucracy that contains this:

The hunter, by Richard Stark, pseud. New York, Pocket Books,   155 p. (Permabook edition, M 4272) © Richard Stark; 15Dec62; A607387

Fifty years ago today, a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered […]

London Paperback & Pulp Bookfair 2012

Since Trent’s currently in the process of confirming, cataloging, and showcasing every single sleaze paperback Donald E. Westlake ever wrote (under various pseudonyms), I thought I’d take the opportunity to draw the attention of British VWoP readers (and any vacationing Americans) to a forthcoming event where there’s guaranteed to be a […]

Westlake Score and review: 361 by Donald E. Westlake

NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.

As anyone who’s been following my books blog Existential Ennui for a while will know, I’ve been avidly collecting Donald E. Westlake first (and other) editions—both his “own-brand” books and his Richard Stark, Tucker Coe et al pseudonymous works—since 2010. […]

Like having a scorpion in the room: an interview with Darwyn Cooke on Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score

Introduction

Darwyn Cooke does one in-depth interview for each volume in his series of comic book adaptations of Richard Stark’s [pseudonym of Donald Westlake] Parker novels. (Here are the interviews for The Hunter and The Outfit.) For his new one, The Score, he was kind enough to invite The Violent World of Parker to conduct the interview. “I thought it was time I geared whatever big interview I did more towards Don’s [Donald Westlake’s] fans, rather than my own,” he told us.

For better or worse, he got what he asked for. Nick and I managed two conference calls with Darwyn across three countries, three time zones, and two continents.

There are minor spoilers sprinkled throughout, but nothing, I think, that will affect the enjoyment of the reader of either Darwyn’s great adaptation or its source material. (I did remove one major spoiler, although not for this book.)

Thank you for sitting down with us, Darwyn, and thank you for your immense contributions to the violent world of Parker, and to The Violent World of Parker.

Dear reader: Dig in. I think you’ll find it as fascinating as Nick and I did.

Interview

Nick: [Opening after some green room chatter] Speaking of The Score: How was it this time? How did you find it? How did you adapt to it this time out?

Darwyn: There’s sort of a built-in need to find a way to make each one better than the last. That usually adds to stress and anxiety and all sorts of things you can’t control, but the more I work with Parker, the more comfortable it gets. It’s a pretty easy ride now.

I know how I feel about the character and I know how people have reacted to it, so I feel really free just to go ahead with it? And, in every case with Parker I’m just out to please myself. And that happens to be pleasing other people, so that’s great.

I’m never sitting there worrying about what it is I’m doing. It’s just a very comfortable, really gratifying job now.

We’re like old buddies.

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