The Dame, Donald E. Westlake
The Dame, Donald E. Westlake
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

The Dame

Author: Donald E. Westlake

Narrator: R. C. Bray

Unabridged: 4 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/01/2013

Synopsis

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating and more hot-blooded than Parker; think fewer guns, more dames. Not that there isn't violence and adventure aplenty… The Dame finds Grofield in Puerto Rico protecting a rich, demanding woman in her isolated jungle villa, and reluctantly assuming the role of detective. A rare Westlake take on a whodunit, The Dame features a cast of colorful characters and a suspenseful, and memorable, climax.

About Donald E. Westlake

Richard Stark (1933–2008), wrote dozens of novels under his own name and a rainbow of other pseudonyms. Many of his books have been adapted for film, most notably The Hunter, which became the 1967 noir Point Blank and the 1999 smash Payback.

About R. C. Bray

R. C. Bray is an award-winning audiobook narrator with over 180 titles to his credit. Besides winning five AudioFile Earphones Awards, he won the prestigious Audie Award in 2015 for Best Science Fiction Narration and has been an Audie Award finalist seven times. He has been a finalist for the Voice Arts Award, and in 2014, his narration earned a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award. He is also an accomplished producer and voice-over artist, and his voice can be heard in countless TV and radio commercials.

Reviews

Goodreads review by James

Alan Grofield first appeared as a character in Richard Stark's excellent series about Parker, the tough-as-nails heist man. Grofield, whose day job was as an actor in small, regional theater groups, moonlighted as a very competent thief. Parker could always depend on Grofield when the two worked tog......more

Goodreads review by Dave

The second in the four book Alan Grofield series by Richard Stark, that is a spin-off of Stark's Parker series featuring a struggling midwestern actor supporting himself by doing heists with Parker. This one follows The Damsel, where Parker gets involved with a young woman after he is recuperating f......more

Goodreads review by Jim

This takes place not long after the island heist in The Handle* & follows Grofield on a fun adventure on Jamaica. The central issue is a who-done-it murder, not something Grofield would normally care about, except the victim's husband is sure that he's it. Interesting characters in tough situations......more

Goodreads review by John

★ ★ ★ 1/2 Alan Grofield, in his second adventure after spinning out of the world of Parker, seems to get no rest. The Dame takes place right after The Damsel, which closely follows The Handle, where he was seriously injured. He would have been wise to go home, not only because he was flush with money......more

Quotes

“Marvelous… Nearly half a century into his writing career, Westlake remains superb.” Entertainment Weekly

“Crime fiction stripped down—as it was meant to be.… Oh, how the pages keep turning.” Philadelphia Inquirer

“Stark’s momentum is such that the more matter he throws into the hopper the faster the gears turn. The books are machines that all but read themselves. You can read the entire series and not once have to invest in a bookmark.” London Standard

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