Bruce Von Stiers

Richard Stark is a writer of tough, gritty crime novels. His books have been immensely popular and even turned into movies. The main character in most Stark books is a criminal named Parker. The latest Stark novel is called Firebreak. It brings Parker into a whole different kind of caper than he’s used to.

The book starts out with a description of Parker killing somebody. In this situation it was kill or be killed. He was always on the lookout for things, but who was after him, and why? He doesn’t know but wants to find out.

Parker also gets a job offer from someone he’s done capers with before. This new caper involves art and a dot com billionaire. It seems that this guy has a bunch of artwork stashed at a lodge way up north and a group of thieves want to steal it from him. Easy thing for Parker the master thief , right? Wrong. There are more complications than Carter has pills.

First of all, there is a timetable for this heist. It seems that somebody got nailed doing some of the prelim work on the heist and may sing to the cops if they don’t get a piece of the action, and soon. Another thing is that the lodge is way out in the boonies and heavily fortified. And the vault will be hard to crack. They have recruited an electronics genius with his own set of problems.

Parker goes back and forth between planning the heist and finding out who was behind the attempt on his life.

Firebreak is not one of these cutesy heist novels. It is gritty and all too realistic. Parker is one of those criminals that you really don’t want to get in the way of. The violence portrayed in the book might garner it an R rating if it were a movie.

The plot of Firebreak in nothing too original. It is about thievery and revenge. Stark brings a modern twist to the heist scenario with all the high tech stuff of the dot com billionaire. But what makes it unique is how Stark sucks you into the story and makes you almost feel sorry for Parker and the troubles he’s going through. And even though he’s a crook, you can’t help but want Parker to come out on top.