The Damsel: An Alan Grofield Novel

Richard Stark

Mar 2012 · The Alan Grofield Novels Book 1 · University of Chicago Press

About this ebook

Escaping from the pages of the master crime writer’s acclaimed Parker novels, a fast-talking actor-thief has an adventure of his own across Mexico.
 
For years now, stage actor Alan Grofield has supported his craft with side gigs in the underworld, including a few dangerous heists with a ruthless criminal named Parker. After their last scheme, Grofield finds himself stranded in Mexico with a bullet wound and a bag of cash. And then things start to get interesting—when he watches a young woman climbing into his fifth-floor hotel window.
 
It turns out Elly Fitzgerald has a taste for trouble to match Grofield’s penchant for finding it. When the hoods she’s running from catch up to her, she and Grofield set out on an action-packed road trip from Mexico City to Acapulco, hoping to stop an assassination along the way. The first Alan Grofield novel by crime fiction master Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark, The Damsel is full of wit, adrenaline, and political intrigue.
 
This edition includes a new foreword by Sarah Weinman.

About the author

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating and more hot-blooded than Parker; think fewer guns, more dames. Not that there isn’t violence and adventure aplenty. The Damsel begins directly after the Parker novel The Handle. Following a wounded Grofield and his gal on a scenic, action-packed road trip from Mexico City to Acapulco, The Damsel is full of wit, adrenaline, and political intrigue. With a new foreword by Sarah Weinman that situates the Grofield series within Westlake’s work as a whole, this novel is an exciting addition to any crime fiction fan’s library.