Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1The ax (1997)The ax (1997) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1997After losing his paper-industry job, Burke treats other applicants as competitors to be eliminated. Westlake lets the language of recruitment and efficiency become the machinery of an appalling argument. Choose this for a painfully recognisable need for wages and status, followed by an utterly…0
  2. 2Blacktop Wasteland (2020)Blacktop Wasteland (2020) 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2020Beauregard wants the garage, the bills and family life to hold together; his skill as a getaway driver offers another route to money. Cosby gives that temptation weight without making the resulting danger disappear into talk of providing for loved ones. The car sequences are forceful, but the…0
  3. 3Harlem Shuffle (2021)Harlem Shuffle (2021) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2021Ray Carney sells furniture and occasionally moves goods whose origins he would rather not examine. A cousin's proposed robbery strains that distinction between respectable trader and willing fence. Whitehead is especially good on the small permissions that accumulate before anyone announces a grand…0
  4. 4The hot rock (1970)The hot rock (1970) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1970Dortmunder leaves prison and takes on an emerald theft that refuses to stay completed. The repeated attempts make crime look like awkward, unreliable labour: arranging people, solving practical problems and discovering that the last solution created another one. This is the comic choice in the…0
  5. 5The Hunter (aka Point Blank and Payback) (1962)The Hunter (aka Point Blank and Payback) (1962) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 1962Betrayed after a robbery, Parker goes after the money he considers his. Stark's spare prose makes that proprietary claim brutally clear, while keeping its violence difficult to dress up as decency. Read for an offender whose sense of entitlement is consistent rather than sympathetic. This is the…0
  6. 6The ice harvest (2000)The ice harvest (2000) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2000Charlie Arglist has stolen from the people whose business he helps to run and plans to leave Wichita on Christmas Eve. Instead of a clean departure, Phillips gives him bars, old grievances and one more reason to delay. The compressed night exposes the distance between imagining a fresh start and…0
  7. 7The getaway (1989)The getaway (1989)Published 1 Jan 1989Doc McCoy's bank robbery promises escape, but the money does little to settle distrust between the people carrying it. Thompson pushes the pursuit beyond straightforward realism, so this works best if you will follow a heist story into something more feverish. Its place here rests on a bleak…0
  8. 8Pop. 1280 (2006)Pop. 1280 (2006) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2006Nick Corey presents himself as an ineffective small-town sheriff, a pose that helps him duck responsibility while pursuing his own interests. His apparently casual voice is the trap: the more reasonable he tries to sound, the more alarming his account becomes. Choose this for institutional power…0i
  9. 9She rides shotgun (2017)She rides shotgun (2017) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2017An ex-prisoner takes his eleven-year-old daughter on the run when his enemies threaten her life. Harper makes protection and exposure to violence disturbingly difficult to separate: Nate wants to save Polly, yet the world he knows also teaches her how to harm. The action is fierce and sometimes…0
  10. 10Everybody Knows (2023)Everybody Knows (2023) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished 1 Jan 2023Mae Pruett works in the business of making powerful people's problems disappear. When violence reaches her own circle, the skills and connections that sustain her job become harder to regard as neutral professional services. Harper widens criminality beyond the person holding a weapon to the paid…0