Ask the Parrot

Ask the Parrot is a very good follow up to Nobody Runs Forever, as Parker flees a disastrously botched robbery. As always, Stark sets the scene better than anyone:

The name on the town sign Pooley, and it wasn’t much of a place. One minor intersection was controller by a light blinking amber in two directions, red in the other two. A gas station stood on the corner there, along with a shut-down bank branch, a shut-down bar and a shut-down sporting goods store. Twenty houses or so were strung along the two narrow roads of the town, three or four of them boarded up, most of the rest dilapidated...

This first walk through town was simply to get a sense of it, and the sense was of leftovers, of people still in the stadium after the game is done. There were no children watching television, no toys on porches, never more than two people visible in any house. These were the respectable poor, living in retirement in the only place they’d ever known.

While this may be one of the lesser Parkers, it has more than enough such moments to make it a worthwhile read.