The Parker books are "no frills" thrillers, tightly and economically told with the bare minimum of descriptive scene-setting. If this has been in a sense required by the more than abook-a-year pace with which they have been produced (while Westlake has at the same time been very active under his own and other names), it is also a perfectly appropriate and highly satisfying method of narration: Since Parker's interests in people and places evaporate when he has achieved what he wants, there's no reason for either him or readers to dwell upon the transitory phenomena of day-to-day existence. In reducing the hard-boiled thriller to its essential elements, Westlake's Parker novels offer a bracing dash of stimulant to a readership all too often sapped by purplishly-overwritten prose and tedious psychological speculation.