The Rare Coin Score: A Parker Novel

If you like tight early 60's period noir-crime fiction, you'll love the Parker series. A great series for reading while commuting to/from work or during air travel. Long enough to be engaging, but short enough to take in when time is tight. This isn't a 5 course meal, more like a quick lunch from a takeout joint: nothing fancy, but pleasantly filling and satisfying. This book can stand alone on it own but I recommend starting the series from the first book as the storylines tend to setup each subsequent book. A nice guilty pleasure!

The signature elements are here: a marginal job, wild-card team members and a hard-working Parker. Since Parker meets Claire in this caper it is a must read for continuity in the series. This was my chance to find a book that had not been collected by any of the libraries where I have lived.

Parker and his group of professional thieves join in a "job" with a professional coin dealer. It was possibly lucrative. The coin dealer had a few "issues". He had a crush on his beautiful assistant who barely tolerated him...plus this guy was -at heart- cowardly. Nevertheless Parker needed money. He did a good job...but the heist took place in a small town...sort of a meddling, nosy townsfolk who ardently gathered to catch the thieves. O.K. but one was caught...the captured thief had a chance to reveal stuff...Parker comes off with some clever manoevers...he plays a part in his own manhunt...he holes up with a local misogynist(?)...he has to be hidden various times...it's a great adventure....

... It even has an excellent Robert E. McGinnis cover painting. The story inside the book, of course, is just as excellent. Just what I've come to expect from Donald E. Westlake, regardless of whatever pen name he chooses to write under. Parker is a lean, mean, hardboiled machine as always, taking no prisoners and no 'crud'. Readers of the newer "Stark" novels might also be interested to know that this is the book where Parker meets his lady friend Clair, who in this 1967 version, is more of a femm fatale than she is in the present day. Bottom line: If you can find THE RARE COIN SCORE, grab it and read it!

Parker ends up working with amateurs and a shaky ex-con as he plans the robbery of a coin convention. Parker does pick up a new love interest in Claire. The heist goes sour with a double-cross and it is up to Parker to improvise the escape. Same Parker series format and a quick read. If new to the Parker series start with the Hunter/Payback/Point Blank book.