The final Parker novel,
Dirty Money, is good in the ways that all Parker novels are good, but there
is nothing otherwise remarkable about it. It picks up right where the previous
Parker novel leaves off: Our antihero wants to retrieve the $2 million dollars
that his gang left hidden at the end of Ask
the Parrot. He wants this money even though he knows that it is marked and
therefore useless in the United States. This is a desperate Parker, running low
on cash and working without I.D. Thus, his larger goal in the novel is to
become a fully functional Parker again, flush and not fearful of an ordinary
traffic stop. When Parker achieves this goal, however, the victory feels
unavoidably sad, and I’m not too noir to admit it: I felt choked up at the end,
sentimental about the exit of a character whose great charm is that he never feels
sentimental. Grade: B-
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