what are the Parker books? I haven't seen the movie but love a good book with lots of violence, etc.
The Parker books were a series of pulp fiction from the 60's and 70's mainly, with some in the 2000's that were written mainly with blue collar men in mind.
The plots were simple, Parker was a better than average con man and thief that gets let in on a big heist and is double crossed by a woman or partner, and the rest of the book is him looking for revenge, and perhaps a little more money and tail along the way.
It's pretty straight forward, but they aren't cheesy books, in that Donald Westlake(writing under Richard Stark) has a way with writing gritty realistic depictions of street crime, and is very good with economy of words. When he writes a violent scene or diagrams a complex crime, you find yourself going along saying "yeah, I can see that". It's not comic booky or over the top.
If you've read Lawrence Block's Scudder books or some of the darker Elmore Leonard stuff, it's similar.
He's got the feel of a good 70's, early 80's crime film.
Here's the best site on the books -
http://violentworldofparker.com/ .
And a good one on crime fiction altogether -
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/hallofame.html .
http://www.thrillingdetective.com/eyes.html .
