Firebreak: A Parker Novel

Foreword by Terry Teachout

Between Parker's 1961 debut and his return in the late 1990s, the whole world of crime changed. Now fake IDs and credit cards had to be purchased from specialists; increasingly sophisticated policing made escape and evasion tougher; and, worst of all, money had gone digital—the days of cash-stuffed payroll trucks were long gone.

But cash isn't everything, not when a collection of priceless paintings is ripe for picking. In Firebreak, Parker travels to a palatial Montana "hunting lodge" where a dot-com millionaire hides a gallery of stolen old masters—which will fetch Parker a pretty penny if his team can just get it past the mansion's tight security. The forests of Montana are an inhospitable place for a heister when well-laid plans fall apart, but no matter how untamed the wilderness, Parker's guaranteed to be the most dangerous predator around.

Praise for Richard Stark's Parker novels

"The Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments." ―Terry Teachout, Weekly Standard

"Parker is a brilliant invention. . . . What chiefly distinguishes Westlake, under whatever name, is his passion for process and mechanics. . . . [Parker] is a romantic vestige, a free-market anarchist whose independent status is becoming a thing of the past." ― New York Times Book Review

"Westlake knows precisely how to grab a reader, draw him or her into the story, and then slowly tighten his grip until escape is impossible." ― Washington Post