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Richard Stark Books in Order

See all Richard Stark books in order, with Parker and Grofield reading order, summaries, and tips on where to start with Donald E. Westlake's crime novels.

Last updated: December 25, 2025

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32 books

The Score

by Richard Stark

2012

Cooke adapts the legendary town-robbery caper, as Parker assembles a crew to loot every cash business in an isolated mining community in one night. Meticulous planning, fraying tempers, and explosive double crosses play out in sharp, mid century visuals.

The Outfit

by Richard Stark

2010

Continuing the graphic adaptation, this volume finds Parker using his new face and a network of fellow thieves to strike the Outfit’s rackets across the country. Casinos, couriers, and counting rooms fall in a stylish flurry of hard-edged blue and black panels.

The Man with the Getaway Face

by Richard Stark

2010

This short graphic prelude bridges *The Hunter* and *The Outfit*, showing how Parker bought his new face and joined an armored car job that nearly goes sideways. It compresses the second novel into a tight, brutal slice of his working life.

The Hunter

by Richard Stark

2009

Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel adapts Parker’s first outing, following his grim walk into 1960s New York to punish the wife and partner who betrayed him and to confront the Outfit. Bold, economical artwork matches the story’s cold, methodical violence.

Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

2008

Returning to a New England town after the chaos of earlier jobs, Parker sets out to recover a hidden bundle of hot bank money before the law or rival thieves reach it. With federal agents, local cops, a bounty hunter, and old partners converging, every move could be his last.

Ask The Parrot

by Richard Stark

2006

On the run after a botched armored car job, Parker limps into rural Massachusetts and takes refuge with a bitter loner nursing a grudge against the local racetrack. Together they plot one more score while police, posses, and armed neighbors close in.

Nobody Runs Forever

by Richard Stark

2004

Short on cash after a blown job, Parker signs onto a plan to rob an armored car convoy during a bank merger. Loose talk, a nervous ex-con, a relentless cop, and a hungry bounty hunter turn the dangerous theft into a tightening noose.

Breakout

by Richard Stark

2002

Caught moving pharmaceuticals, Parker lands in a supposedly escape-proof prison where the authorities are close to learning who he really is. Teaming with two other inmates, he engineers a daring breakout that leads straight into a second, even messier job.

Firebreak

by Richard Stark

2001

A tip about a dot-com millionaire’s private gallery of stolen masterpieces draws Parker to a fortified lodge in the Montana woods. Balancing this risky art heist with unfinished business from earlier jobs, he faces high-tech security and lethal winter terrain.

Flashfire / Parker

by Richard Stark

2000

Cut out of his share after a Midwestern bank robbery, Parker is told his partners are “borrowing” the money for a jewel heist in Palm Beach. Building a fake identity among the rich, he plans to steal their big score out from under them.

Backflash

by Richard Stark

1998

Parker breaks one of his own rules by taking a job on a Hudson River gambling boat stuffed with cash. With an insider feeding the crew information and unexpected muscle on board, he has to improvise fast or go down with the score.

Comeback

by Richard Stark

1997

After robbing the cash haul from a stadium revival meeting, Parker is double crossed by one of his own crew and cut off from the money. Posing as an insurance investigator, he works alongside the evangelist's security chief to find the loot first.

Butcher's Moon

by Richard Stark

1974

Back in the corrupt town where he once lost a stash and nearly his life, Parker calls in favors from a long list of past accomplices. What starts as a hunt for missing money explodes into a brutal gang war played out in city streets and back rooms.

Plunder Squad

by Richard Stark

1972

Moving between overlapping jobs, from hijacked cargo to an ambitious art theft, Parker finds himself juggling too many partners, buyers, and grudges. An old enemy on his trail and a string of misfires leave him fighting just to escape with his life.

Slayground

by Richard Stark

1971

A getaway crash strands Parker alone with the loot inside a closed-for-winter amusement park. Surrounded by mobsters and crooked cops who control the only exit, he turns Fun Island into a lethal maze where every ride can become part of a trap.

Lemons Never Lie

by Richard Stark

1971

Actor-thief Alan Grofield turns down a reckless brewery payroll job in Las Vegas, only to be beaten and robbed by the man who proposed it. When the trouble follows him home to Indiana, he is pushed into a violent, very personal campaign of payback.

Deadly Edge

by Richard Stark

1971

Parker’s crew robs the cash take from a roaring rock concert and splits up, thinking the hard part is over. When someone begins murdering the heisters and traces the trail to Claire’s new house, Parker has to defend his home and settle the score.

The Sour Lemon Score

by Richard Stark

1969

After a tight bank job, Parker expects an easy split, until one partner seizes the whole take and starts killing the rest of the crew. With cops circling and bodies falling, Parker hunts the traitor who should have made sure he was dead first.

The Dame

by Richard Stark

1969

Summoned to Puerto Rico by a mysterious offer, Grofield ends up at the hilltop estate of Belle Danamato and tangled in a classic country-house murder when she turns up dead. Accused by mobsters and guests alike, he has to clear himself and escape alive.

The Blackbird

by Richard Stark

1969

After an armored car job explodes into disaster, Grofield wakes in a hospital under federal guard. Offered prison or a covert assignment at an international conference of dictators and revolutionaries, he is dragged into espionage he wants no part of.

The Black Ice Score

by Richard Stark

1968

Envoys from a newly independent African nation ask Parker to help steal back a fortune in diamonds looted by a corrupt strongman and now locked in a New York museum. Training political amateurs for a professional heist proves as risky as the job itself.

The Rare Coin Score

by Richard Stark

1967

Against his better judgment, Parker agrees to mastermind the robbery of a high-end coin convention, working with a nervy collector and a sophisticated widow. The payoff could be huge, but amateurs and attraction are both dangerous to a professional thief.

The Green Eagle Score

by Richard Stark

1967

Relaxing in Puerto Rico with Claire, Parker is lured into a job targeting the cash payroll of an Air Force base in upstate New York. An edgy insider, a talkative ex-wife, and a loose-lipped therapist threaten to bring the whole operation down.

The Damsel

by Richard Stark

1967

Shot up after a Parker caper, Grofield limps into a Mexico City hotel room and straight into the troubles of a woman on the run from killers and political schemers. Their frantic journey toward Acapulco mixes romance, gunfire, and half-baked revolution.

The Seventh / The Split

by Richard Stark

1966

After a meticulously timed college football stadium robbery, Parker hides the cash and goes home, only to return to a murdered girlfriend and an empty room. Hunting the thief while dodging detectives, he turns a perfect score into a personal vendetta.

The Handle / Run Lethal

by Richard Stark

1966

Parker is hired by the mob to knock over an island casino and destroy a rival’s operation off the Texas coast. With Alan Grofield on the crew and betrayals waiting on the island, the line between a clean getaway and a watery grave is razor thin.

The Jugger

by Richard Stark

1965

Anxious letters from an aging safecracker draw Parker to a quiet Midwestern town, only for him to find the man dead and the police already suspicious. With his own identity at risk, Parker has to locate the missing money and silence anyone in his way.

The Steel Hit / The Man With The Getaway Face

by Richard Stark

1963

With a surgically altered face and a price on his head, Parker signs on to an armored car job in New Jersey. A treacherous girlfriend and a nosy blackmailer turn the clean caper into a brutal fight to stay free.

The Score / Killtown

by Richard Stark

1963

In an audacious scheme, Parker agrees to clean out an entire North Dakota mining town in a single night, from both banks to the company payroll. With a crew this large, one bad decision can bring the whole town crashing back on them.

The Outfit

by Richard Stark

1963

After surviving a hit squad sent by the Outfit, Parker retaliates by organizing a string of robberies that target the syndicate’s businesses across the country. As the crews hit one operation after another, his private war escalates toward open bloodshed.

The Mourner

by Richard Stark

1963

Called in to repay an old debt, Parker is hired to snatch a small medieval statue known as the Mourner. The job drags him into a world of art collectors, crooked officials, and security men where nobody is quite what they claim to be.

Payback / Point Blank / The Hunter

by Richard Stark

1962

Double crossed by his wife and partner during an arms heist, Parker survives a bullet and a prison stretch, then walks into Manhattan with one goal: get his share of the money back from the Outfit, whatever it costs.

Where should I start?

If you want the core Parker story from the beginning: The HunterThe Steel Hit / The Man With The Getaway FaceThe OutfitThe Score / Killtown
If you like big, ambitious heists: The Score / KilltownThe Seventh / The SplitThe Rare Coin ScoreThe Green Eagle Score
If you prefer later, more modern capers: ComebackBackflashFlashfire / ParkerFirebreak
If you want the Grofield spin off adventures: The DamselThe DameThe BlackbirdLemons Never Lie
If you enjoy graphic novels: The HunterThe OutfitThe Man with the Getaway FaceThe Score

Author bio

Richard Stark was the toughest of the many names used by Donald E. Westlake, a Brooklyn-born crime writer who spent nearly fifty years turning out sharp, tightly plotted stories. Under that signature he created Parker and Alan Grofield, cold-eyed professionals whose heists changed how crime fiction looked and sounded.

Westlake was born in New York City in 1933 and grew up in Yonkers and Albany, New York. As a teenager he wrote constantly, collecting rejection slips until he finally sold a short story in the mid 1950s. After time in college and a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he moved back to New York City, worked briefly in publishing, and soon committed to writing full time.

He liked routine and simple tools. Westlake wrote on a manual Smith Corona typewriter, keeping spare machines for parts, and often worked late at night in small upstairs rooms in Manhattan or upstate New York. The typewriter suited the way he thought about stories, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, with little patience for fuss or ornament.

From the start he published under several names so he could write more often than publishers thought sensible. Donald E. Westlake on a cover usually meant comic or offbeat capers. Richard Stark signalled something harsher. The Stark books use short, stripped-down sentences, little interior monologue, and almost no sentiment; the camera stays close to the job, not the author.

The first Parker novel, The Hunter, appeared in 1962. It opens with Parker, broke and furious, walking across the George Washington Bridge to collect money he is owed after a double cross. Over the next run of books, Parker robs an entire town in The Score, a college football stadium in The Seventh, an island casino in The Handle, an Air Force base in The Green Eagle Score, and even a closed amusement park in Slayground. Each job is presented as work, with planning, logistics, and the ugly surprises that come when things go wrong.

Grofield, who starts as Parker’s talkative partner, steps into the spotlight in four novels of his own. In those books Westlake lets the Stark voice loosen slightly. The capers veer into political intrigue, tropical revolutions, murder mysteries, and finally a grim revenge story in Lemons Never Lie, but they are still anchored in the same practical view of crime.

While the Stark books stayed lean and unsentimental, Westlake’s work under his own name ranged widely. He wrote the comic John Dortmunder series, the satiric novel God Save the Mark, darker standalones such as 361 and The Ax, and the screenplay for The Grifters, which earned an Academy Award nomination. Over his career he won three Edgar Awards and in 1993 was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

In 1997 he revived Richard Stark with Comeback and went on to write eight more Parker novels that quietly moved the character into a world of riverboat casinos, televangelists, and electronic security without changing his core. Westlake died of a heart attack on the last night of 2008 while on vacation in Mexico, but the Stark books have stayed in print, been adapted into films and graphic novels, and continue to find new readers who like their crime fiction fast, smart, and unsentimental.

Edited by

Richard Reis

Software engineer whose passion for tracking book recommendations from podcasts inspired the creation of MRB.

Anurag Ramdasan

Lead investor at 3one4 Capital whose startup expertise and love for books helped shaped MRB and its growth.

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All 32 Richard Stark Books in Order (Complete List 2026)