With the fifth entry of the Parker series, The Score, Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake puts his career criminal anti-hero in charge of his most ambitious heist yet: the 12-man robbery of a North Dakota mining town. This allows the author to expand the violent world of Parker by introducing a slew of fresh characters, including thespian-thief Alan Grofield, who would go on to star in four solo novels of his own.
We discuss the series' change in scope and structure in a book that would set the scene moving forward, the first of several to make the spectacular job the whole show. We also talk about the little-seen French movie adaptation, the introduction of this goofball Grofield and why Parker insists on taking jobs with such obvious risks.
The Score artwork by Tony Stella.
The Pink Smoke on Twitter:
twitter.com/thepinksmoke
Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:
twitter.com/cfunderburg
John Cribbs on Twitter:
twitter.com/TheLastMachine
Intro music:
Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two"
Outro music:
Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
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With the fifth entry of the Parker series, The Score, Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake puts his career criminal anti-hero in charge of his most ambitious heist yet: the 12-man robbery of a North Dakota mining town. This allows the author to expand the violent world of Parker by introducing a slew of fresh characters, including thespian-thief Alan Grofield, who would go on to star in four solo novels of his own.
We discuss the series' change in scope and structure in a book that would set the scene moving forward, the first of several to make the spectacular job the whole show. We also talk about the little-seen French movie adaptation, the introduction of this goofball Grofield and why Parker insists on taking jobs with such obvious risks.
The Score artwork by Tony Stella.
The Pink Smoke on Twitter:
twitter.com/thepinksmoke
Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:
twitter.com/cfunderburg
John Cribbs on Twitter:
twitter.com/TheLastMachine
Intro music:
Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two"
Outro music:
Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
“I went to a different planet where the spacemen drink coffee and don't cheat on their wives.”
Cryptozoologist Christopher Funderburg and parapsychologist Martin Kessler meet in an undisclosed location to perform a secret autopsy on Visitors from Lanulos, "a history book about something that never happened." Ostensibly the chronicle of Woodrow Derenberger, a West Virginian contactee who reported encounters with Indrid Cold and his extraterrestrial buddies from the galaxy of Ganymede, the book would extend apophenic red strings to Jacques Vallee, Carl Higdon, John Keel, Whitley Strieber and Barney & Betty Hill. Are these con artists, crackpots or genuine survivors?
Asking questions like these, Chris and Martin examine how a person differentiates between truth and fantasy; how ufology relates to the function of language, engaging with hypotheticals and identifying the turning point for conspiracy theories in American culture. They both want to believe!
The Pink Smoke on X:x.com/thepinksmoke
Christopher Funderburg on X:x.com/CFunderburg
Martin Kessler on X:x.com/MovieKessler
The Pink Smoke podcast
With the fifth entry of the Parker series, The Score, Richard Stark aka Donald E. Westlake puts his career criminal anti-hero in charge of his most ambitious heist yet: the 12-man robbery of a North Dakota mining town. This allows the author to expand the violent world of Parker by introducing a slew of fresh characters, including thespian-thief Alan Grofield, who would go on to star in four solo novels of his own.
We discuss the series' change in scope and structure in a book that would set the scene moving forward, the first of several to make the spectacular job the whole show. We also talk about the little-seen French movie adaptation, the introduction of this goofball Grofield and why Parker insists on taking jobs with such obvious risks.
The Score artwork by Tony Stella.
The Pink Smoke on Twitter:
twitter.com/thepinksmoke
Christopher Funderburg on Twitter:
twitter.com/cfunderburg
John Cribbs on Twitter:
twitter.com/TheLastMachine
Intro music:
Unleash the Bastards / "Tea for Two"
Outro music:
Marcus Pinn / "Vegas"
