I read my first crime novel

My default mental image of a "crime novel" would more accurately be described as a "cop novel": crime happens in the story, and sometimes very horrendous violent crimes are depicted, but it's always from the perspective of someone who thinks the crimes are bad. The point-of-view character is a cop, or a private detective, or someone with specialized job that makes them well-suited for solving certain kinds of crimes, or sometimes just a normal person out for justice, but the protagonist is usually trying to stop a crime they know will happen, or stop someone from doing more crimes. I think these kinds of stories can give people a warped perspective on violent crime and the realities of the criminal justice system if you consume too many of them, but overall I think they're harmless fun. Not my go-to genre, but good for what they are.

The Hunter by Richard Stark¹ is a true crime novel. Not "true crime", it's 100% fictional, but the point-of-view character is a career criminal and a sociopath. Parker (no first name given) is a guy who lived a comfortable life of crime. Every few years he would take a big "job", a bank robbery or armored truck hijacking or jewel heist, that would bring in enough money to take it easy, travel around the US to avoid detection, stay in fancy hotels, and have sex with his wife. As the money starts running out, he becomes less comfortable, more cold and distant to his wife, and more intensely focused as he starts looking for his next "job".

This worked out fine for awhile, until one day he takes a job intercepting a payment for a shipment of weapons to freedom fighters in South America. The handover was to take place in Canada, because it's easier to smuggle goods and money across the US-Canada border than try to fly direct into and out of the US. He was working with a couple people he had never worked with before, and one of them double-crossed him, left him for dead, and took Parker's share of the money and his wife. Parker miraculously survived the shooting, and vowed revenge on the man who destroyed his life.

As Parker makes his way back home and tracks down the man who betrayed him, his sociopathy becomes evident. He's singularly focused on his goal of obtaining vengeance, and won't let anyone get in his way. He kills anyone who threatens his mission, even if their only transgression is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He murders a woman simply because her apartment is the best vantage point for a stake-out. Unlike some antiheroes, he has no moral compass whatsoever. He's not a sadist, he takes no inherent pleasure in killing, and he has no interest in inflicting harm for its own sake. He's purely self-interested. His goal is to do whatever it takes to "make things right" by his own selfish definition.

If there's any reason at all to root for him, it's because his main targets are even worse violent criminals, guys who take pleasure in torture and sexual violence, organized criminals who systemically prey on the weak and powerless. But Parker doesn't actually care. Their actions are only meaningful to him inasmuch that they interfere with his goals and desires.

One obvious question I had was this: if the protagonist doesn't care about anything, why should I? I've enjoyed books with unlikable protagonists before--I just finished re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces and I still really enjoy it. I don't know if I'd go as far as to call Ignatius a sociopath, but he's definitely a selfish narcissist. The difference is that ACoD recognizes that this is a bad thing, and the plot punishes Ignatius for it. Ignatius also has an interesting personality and interesting internal motivations. It's funny to notice the contradictions between what he claims to believe and what he does. The book also has other characters with a wide variety of interesting personalities.

There's nothing interesting about Parker. He's an efficient cold-blooded machine of violence. There's not much else. I gave The Hunter 2/5 stars on Storygraph. I will give it this: it is an immensely readable book. Donald Westlake is a very good writer. It's about 200 pages long, the plot is well-paced, and I blew threw it in a day. I won't say I didn't enjoy it, but it's definitely junk food and it definitely made me feel kind of icky.

I checked out The Hunter on the recommendation of a booktube channel, Man Carrying Thing, who I only recently realized is a booktuber. You may be familiar with him from his hundreds of 1- or 2-minute comedy skit videos. He's recently posted some longer essay-style videos, some of them about books. I like his takes and think he has interesting things to say, so I looked at his older videos and found the book series about a total sociopath. A 200-page book is a very small time investment, so I decided to give it a shot. I don't regret it, but I'm not yet seeing what MCT sees in the series. To be fair, he says the first book isn't a great representation of the series as a whole, and suggests startingreception, it's not a beloved classic film, but Roger Ebert gave it 4/5 stars, so it can't with book 7 or 12, but I wanted to go in order. I'm not going to read all of them right away, but I think it could make a good light snack in between denser and more complicated books.

If you're more into movies than books, The Hunter was adapted into the 1999 Mel Gibson film Payback. I read the wikipedia synopsis, and it sounds pretty faithful to the book. It had a mixed reception, it's not a beloved classic film, but Roger Ebert gave it 4/5 stars, so it can't be a total waste. Although he says the key factor in the movie's success is Mel Gibson, so 25 years of hindsight about the kind of person Mel Gibson is probably won't do it any favors.