Nobody Runs Forever

Nobody Runs Forever by Richard Stark

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Parker and six other hoods are planning a heist when they discover one of the guys is wearing a wire. The job falls apart and Parker gets a line on another job: an armored car robbery. But can Parker stay ahead of the people looking for the dead man who wore the wire?

Yeah, the deeper I get into the post-Butcher's Moon Parker books, I'm not so sure Richard Stark should have picked things up again. Some of Parker's capers go great until the wheels come off somewhere close to the end. In Nobody Runs Forever, it seems like the wheels were never completely on. The caper had a lot of hitches to it and depended on too many amateurs. If it was five or six book earlier in the series, I don't think Parker would have took the job. I bought that Parker's run of bad luck was what convinced him but would everyone still be eager to work with Parker?

Parker himself was the same character, although I still think he seems softer in the post-Butcher's Moon books. Sandra was a good nemesis and I suspect she'll be in the next book. Dalesia and McWhitney were okay but nothing to write home about. The whole caper just seemed like a bad idea from the start.

Not to say it was a bad book. Nobody Runs Forever still had its moments. I loved what happened at McWhitney's bar and I loved the ending. Parker was still his cool self when things started going south.

I enjoyed Nobody Runs Forever but, like most of the post-Butcher's Moon Parker stories, it didn't have the punch of the originals.



View all my reviews