Slayground: A Parker Novel

A deadly thrill ride featuring the “refreshingly amoral” Parker, “a thief who always gets away with the swag” (Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly).

The hunter becomes prey, as a heist goes sour and Parker finds himself trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters, in Slayground. There are no exits from Fun Island. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker can’t afford a single miscalculation. He’s low on bullets and making it out alive is a long shot—but, as anyone who’s crossed his path knows, no one is better at playing higher stakes with shorter odds.

Praise for Richard Stark and Slayground

“Energy and imagination light up virtually every page, as does some of the best hard-boiled prose ever to grace the noir genre.” —Publishers Weekly

“The caper novel, the story of a major criminal operation from the point of view of the participants, has no better practitioner than Richard Stark.” —Anthony Boucher, The New York Times Book Review

“Gritty and chillingly noir . . . [Stark] succeeds in demonstrating his total mastery of crime fiction.” —Booklist

“The Parker novels . . . are among the greatest hard-boiled writing of all time.” —Financial Times

© 2024 The University of Chicago Press (E-bog): 9780226772974

Release date

E-bog: 31. maj 2024