Appealed to by an old co-worker Parker shows up to find the man dead. Others are convinced there is hidden money. Parker doubts it but is sucked into the search.

A bit of a departure from the usual Parker fare. One of his old comrades, Joe Sheer, writes to Parker, initially telling him he has some problems he is handling, but then asks Parker to come help. Joe was a safecracker and one of the people who could reach Parker about a job. Parker decides to help his friend, but arrives too late: Joe is dead and the circumstances of his death are shrouded in mystery; however, another crook shows up looking for money and the local sheriff wants the loot too. As always, Parker's best work is improvising a solution when things go awry, and he crafts an artful solution to this problem. ( )

Parker and the Corrupt Cop
Review of the Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition (May, 2011) of the Pocket Books paperback (1965)

Richard Stark was one of the many pseudonyms of the prolific crime author Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008), who wrote over 100 books. The Stark pseudonym was used primarily for the Parker novels, an antihero criminal who is usually betrayed or ensnared in some manner and who spends each book getting revenge or escaping the circumstances.

The Jugger finds Parker performing what seems like an uncharacteristically altruistic act when he goes to the aid of retired criminal Joe Sheer who is being harassed by corrupt cop Abner Younger for his supposed stash of retirement cash which no longer exists. Parker is protecting his own interests of course, needing to ensure that his cover identity is safe. Joe Sheer is found dead, supposedly of a suicide, and Parker is forced to cooperate with Younger in order to keep seeking the missing cash. The two perform a dance of planned betrayals until finally one wins out.

Narrator Stephen R. Thorne does a good job in all voices in this audiobook edition.

I had never previously read the Stark/Parker novels but became curious when they came up in my recent reading of The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives (Sept. 2020) by Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager. Here is a (perhaps surprising) excerpt from their discussion with author Amor Towles:

Nancy: Do you read Lee Child?
Amor: I know Lee. I had never read his books until I met him, but now I read them whenever they come out. I think some of the decisions he makes are ingenious.
Jeff: Have you read the Parker books by Donald Westlake [writing as Richard Stark]?
Amor: I think the Parker books are an extraordinary series.
Jeff: They feel like a big influence on Reacher, right down to the name. Both Reacher and Parker have a singular focus on the task in front of them.
Amor: But Parker is amoral. Reacher is just dangerous.
Jeff: Right. Reacher doesn't have a conventional morality, but he has his own morality. Parker will do anything he has to do to achieve his goal.
Amor: But to your point, Westlake's staccato style with its great twists at the end the end of the paragraphs, and his mesmerizing central character - these attributes are clearly shared by the Reacher books.

The 24 Parker books are almost all available for free on Audible Plus, except for #21 & #22 which aren't available at all.

Trivia and Links
The Jugger was very loosely adapted as the French film Made in USA (1966) dir. Jean Luc Godard, with the Parker role gender-swapped. An excerpt can be viewed on YouTube without English subtitles here.

There is a brief plot summary of The Jugger and of all the Parker books and adaptations at The Violent World of Parker website.

Although the 2011 Blackstone Audio Inc. audiobook edition shares the same cover art as the University of Chicago Press 2009 reprint, it does not include the Foreword by author John Banville. ( )

“Once or twice a year, Parker was in on an institutional robbery - the robbing from organizations rather than from individuals.”
That’s Parker! He likes to work in groups, with specialists, and the jobs generally take less than a month, so he ‘works’ 4 to 6 weeks a year. His specialties? Planning and violence.

In this story, Parker must check in on Joe Sheer, a man who knows too much about Parker, including what his old face looks like! It's probably the least exciting Parker book I've read so far, but it is still fun to read about a man who is "big and rangy and hard-looking, with the coldest eyes Younger had ever seen, and hands as gnarled as tree branches." A man who buries a young fella "in the cellar in the whole the kid had dug himself." THAT is Parker!

Not much else to say about this particular tale. Maybe just - goodbye Charles Willis? ( )

I remember the description of Reacher by another character in Tripwire: a condom stuffed with walnuts. That was how Lee Child described Reacher as being in shape. Now here's the description of Parker by the police chief in Jugger: "There was something almost frightening about Willis [Parker's pseudonym in the book]. He was big and rangy and hard-looking, with the coldest eyes Younger had ever seen, and hands as gnarled as tree branches. His clothes fit him like an impatient compromise with society, as though the man inside them could never really be comfortable in a suit and a white shirt, with a tie knotted around his neck and leather shoes encasing his feet." You decide which is more intimidating. "A condom stuffed with walnuts" just makes me giggle.

All the Parker stories are enjoyable reads even though we end up hoping the bad guy wins. Most of the titles I have read involve a successful heist followed by screw-ups. This one is a little different in that everyone is looking for money that essentially doesn't exist, but everyone is willing to kill to find it. Parker gets caught up in the middle from which he must extricate himself, which less than satisfactory results for his future. ( )