Jesse and Misha Burnett talk about The Handle by Richard Stark

Talked about on today’s show:
book number 8 in the series, he has fun with the titles, The Green Eagle Score, a bunch of scores in a row, what the word “the handle” meant, Run Lethal, feels a little bit like The Mourner, they’re all the same, they’re different, outside the bounds of the U.S., the setup is different, calling back to Karns from The Outfit, the child molester, moving parts, Nazi war criminal, the actual war crimes, dropped threads on purpose, what comes of Yancy?, he’s a fun character, never see him again, the way real life works, Grofield shot five times in Mexico City hotel, 3 Grofield books, dropped threads, a 1 day delay, not on the ball, time to go over this book again, Parker’s problem with him is he doesn’t have a tan, he raped an 11 year old girl, Salsa is a fun character, the gun dealer, they’re always more of the same, the morality is not social morality, efficiency morality, Parker is essentially, everyone else is suffering from main character syndrome, Parker is the stranger, Poul Anderson?, a Bezerker story, Fred Saberhagen, The Adventure Of The Metal Murderer, is Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Through Time And Space, he’s got a little bit of a personality, Data from Star Trek, he’s not a normal human being, Springfield, Missouri, a 4 hour drive, one of the Dortmunder novels, Bad News, the differences between Parker and Dortmunder, hyperfocus thing, really Westlake, Crystal is trying to make a pass at him, doing the job, parallel evolution, Kelp, they fulfill the same function, annoying but useful, ground the other, when the principals are lost in thought, just as autistic, the insight, Westlake with a new assignment, rewrote the ending, needs to be a series, the worst Parker book, clunkers near the end, the character is not there yet, revenge is absent from every subsequent book, what we love about Parker, he is so efficient, makes Westlake’s character work, another dropped thread, far more intelligent, bimballina, standard good writing, she wants to take pictures of Salsa unclad, what do I care?, about to have sex with Crystal, telephone girl, great book, so good, The Green Eagle Score, sure why not?, in the etext, Michael Kramer, dropbox, Stephen R. Thorne, if this cassette stops working, almost robotic, they’re fancy, so cool, Westlake can’t help himself, the red Thunderbird, broken taillight, the heat was bright, heavy, oppressive, all the comforts of home, Gulf freeway, top 40, no wait for warmup, so full of gimmicks, tinted glass, joyknob, a stuffed toy tiger, Houston, each thinking his own thoughts, a seedy bar, Tropical Palm Lounge, little tables, shiny black formica tops, amber tinted mirrors, DW in large letters, so in the book, he’s so funny, it is funny, that thing in Dancing Aztecs, always drives Fury III, a car called Kill, this is the series, Stark fans, really hardboiled, popular with hardened criminals in prison, he has to have fun, we’re gonna look at the guns, the comic relief for the Hamlet of Stark, any character in a Westlake story could be the main character, Grofield opened the door to Parker’s knock, a man to be our Charon, he has no knowledge of popular culture, but Westlake is Grofield, he loves all the literary references that he’s throwing down, a meeting with Gold Medal, two more this year?, setting up the assignment to get it done, it is absolutely a recipe, styles of chunks, new characters, Handy McKay, that idea, we set up these pins, bringing in the cops, the FBI, the scene with Parker there, assessing their situation, disarms the other guy, a butcher’s knife, he knows about coffee, he’s never read a paperback, recreation, on top of a hot sandy bitch named Michelle, he’s not a connoisseur of anything except getting the job done, gets Grofield involved, the money doesn’t matter, writing for money, that’s his living, he loves the exercise of writing great stories, he made a break with science fiction because it didn’t pay, The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution, The Spy In The Elevator, Anarchaos, he loves science fiction, Lawrence Block, Fredric Brown, didn’t go down that path,wrote good science fiction and fun fantasy, paperbacks and hardcovers, crime was what he could sell after the sex market, a writer who enjoys writing and not just having written, one of the best books about writing, out of print, Paul Westlake, running the website, it wasn’t just him in the estate, they all have to agree or have semi-interest, movies, a new Parker movie, in the trailer for the latest Parker movie it mentions this book, a casino off of the coast of Texas, Grofield is black, Parker’s not right, nobody is Parker, Brent Spiner to play Parker, Jason Stathem came closest, none of them are Parker, [The Outfit], Prime Cut (1972), Lee Marvin, a discussion with someone on the internet, always a mistake, on twitter, nobody’s gonna read, you can just do ai images, you can just see it, in an audio visual medium, epic poetry was the main mode for most of human history, go into the cave, paint an animal or two, mostly computer games that are the main media now, books were huge, plays were pretty big for a while, appreciate the medium what it can do, The Grifters, what Jim Thompson was laying down, fuckn hardboiled, first person narration, small town sheriff, of course I had to destroy him, absolute psychopath, two face, coming from a real abusive place, one about a girl, childhood sexual abuse, she’s got this baggage, a family of abusive psychopaths, Westlakes gets it, translates that to film, The Stepfather (1987), a game and tv show, reading the Star Wars novelization, The Predator (1987) novelization, Alan Dean Foster, music, back to Grofield, just as dangerously messed up as Parker is, how he visualizes things, in terms of a movie, a different symptomology, a narcissist sociopath, a show with Mr. Pulpcovers (Alex), Two Much, 3 movies, a Tamil version, how evil the main character is, we love him, justifying the murders he’s doing, lappin it up, part of Westlake’s genius, Kelp for example, the Kelp/Grofield connection, likeable, steal some money from an institution, puts the salt in the beer, oh my god i’m devastated, too much trauma, the same kind of stuff, there’s no murders, funny situations, hardboiled murderers, as a suggestion, Enough, one of them is a great movie, A Slight Case Of Murder, so good, William H. Macy playing the movie reviewer, James Cromwell, first person narration to the camera, I’m safe, breaking the fourth wall stuff, every chapter is a different detective story trope, A Travesty, Ordo [“Orrie”], a sailor, he finds out about it, a spread of her in Playboy, her biography mentions her marriage to him, the French get him, and Poe and Lovecraft, the amateur detective, the red herring, the book was published 60 years ago, framed for a murder that he actually did, another really good one, we should talk about the actual book we were supposed to read, Cockaigne, an ongoing theme, his obsession with insurance, institutions are always and all corrupt, the more corrupt it is, an “outfit”, the “organization”, even that is full of incompetents, her dysfunction, a little bit neurotic, babbling, has to take her hand, make her shut up, while Yancy went off to get the glasses, proud of himself, a hand drawn map, shaped somewhat like a rubber life-raft, medieval trouble, rows of waves, a complex arrow and letter N, sometimes it ran for the sake of running, like a man tromping an automobile accelerator, a souvenir, the pride still in his voice, where’s the frame, Westlake can’t help himself, our man kind of got enthusiastic, what’s the scale of this map, the other map, graph paper, this one simple bear and neat, there’s so much in it, only 4 hours long, it feels complete and it is complete, there’s no island in the Gulf there, a little bit like the Most Dangerous Game, count Zaroff, General Zaroff, after Red and White Russian war in 1919, Sanger, blood-dripper, hunters, big game hunters, it’s all about that fun setup, the FBI wants him for some reason, he runs the island, same reason that Karns wants him, goodie points, InterPol, Westlake’s pretty cynical, on a Navy ship, Congress was annoyed, this island belonged to, the Sea-Bees, a very cynical eye, just laughs at it, like that of General Zaroff’s island, they’re invading it, a mini-bay of pigs, a guaranteed heist, the money on hand, a sobriquet, Charles Willis, dates, professional heister at it for 20 years, they don’t have his face, he had all that work done, to get away from the Outfit, meta matters, what Westlake has to do to make the series go on, loose threads, Parker and Grofield, slowly bleeding to death, follow the Mexicans, Parker shows the gun, one sentence, he sees the handle of the suitcase, in casinos the amount of money that’s on hand, The Jugger, so interested in writing the book, Firebreak, Breakout, one leads on to the next, curved plastic black alien, the suitcase, Ronin (1998), a CIA guy, a McGuffin, the same suitcase, Pulp Fiction (1994), new flooring in his apartment, take his wife to Florida, this robot that does 2 or 3 jobs a year, it’s...