Richard Stark (pseudonym of Donald Westlake, who among other things wrote the screenplay for Stephen Frears' film Grifters) is simply the best thriller-writer of them all, including Chandler. His anti-hero Parker (no first name, of course) is the ultimate professional: ruthless, practically devoid of emotion, intent on only one thing, which is to get the heist over with quickly and cleanly. Trouble is the people he has to work with, who inevitably screw up the job or betray him, necessitating much trouble for Parker, most of it bloody. This volume, less than handsome but with a good typeface, contains The Man with the Getaway Face, The Outfit, and Deadly Edge - this last is one of the best of the sixteen Parker books Stark wrote in a few years in the early 1960s. Thank you, Alison & Busby; and in Volume II may we have Slayground, Stark's masterpiece?