Breakout

When Donald E. Westlake is funny, he is very, very funny. And when Westlake is Richard Stark, he is very, very bad... Now the creator of the ultimate career criminal — a man known only as Parker — returns with a new experience in noir. This time, Parker gets caught red-handed. And for Parker, once is never enough.
In a drab, hulking warehouse in a hulking, drab city in the center of an empty state, Parker is caught moving pharmaceuticals into a waiting truck. Led into a joint called Stoneveldt — from which no one has ever escaped — Parker has to find a way out, before his whole violent past catches up with him. And getting out of Stoneveldt means taking on the only partners he can find, including one who is already planning his next job.
For Parker and his fellow jailbreakers, freedom is just another word for committing their next felony. They pull off the perfect jailbreak and then start the perfect heist. But things go south in a hurry — leaving three men dead and Parker and his fellow escape artists scratching, clawing, and running for their lives. Suddenly, the big, drab city in the big, empty Midwestern state has become a prison. A cast of cops, busybodies, snitches, and weak links have turned into jailers. And for Parker, the ultimate jailbreak is about to begin.
A taut, twisting, perfectly timed ballet of bad intentions, blind alleys, and bad luck, BREAKOUT is Richard Stark par excellence. Because when it comes to getting into places where he shouldn’t be, and out of places where he should be, Parker is the best bad man in town.