This feels like the ultimate Parker book. It has both failed capers and successful ones. It has sympathetic, pathetic, and frightening antagonists. It has suspense, humor, melancholy, and twists. All of this spread deliciously throughout its double-normal-Parker-novel length. And, perhaps the greatest surprise of all, just as Parker surprisingly loved Claire, it seems he just as surprisingly loves

Grovefield

(no-homo, unfortunately). 

Parker’s dazzling lack of humanity, I’ve come to realize, is only the mark of this series’s exceptional writing when compared to the lush humanity present in every other character we encounter in this book. Everyone from his heist partners, to the obstacles, to the nearly nameless mooks that get tossed in his way display such warm, weird, or idiosyncratic humanity that it makes Parker, by contrast, seem like a monster. A monster that we, because of the deep trouble he always gets into, can find ourselves enjoying as he fights his way back to the top. (And… if he happens to show any human love or kindness or loyalty, it makes those moments all the sweeter.)

I’ve listened to over a dozen books in this series, enjoying every single one. I recommend you also listen to or read at least a dozen books in this series as well before tackling this one. At least the previous two books, so you have the minimum required understanding of Parker’s downward spiral of luck and of one of the delightful characters making a return for this book.