NOVEL

Richard Stark, Butcher’s Moon (University of Chicago, $15 paper). The best of Donald Westlake’s pseudonymous thrillers about Parker, the toughest burglar who ever lived, in which he goes up against an entire big-city crime syndicate–with a little help from a lot of friends. Out of print for years and years, Butcher’s Moon is the ultimate Parker novel, best read as an installment in the series as a whole but comprehensible and wholly satisfying on its own (TT).