Richard Stark Donald Westlake
t seems the latest Richard Stark ‘Parker’ book has gotten a big UK release. At least it the first one I’ve ever been able to walk into my local small town bookshop and buy off the shelf [they had three!].

Along with the big distribution and promotional price comes a cover quote from a booker prize winning author and a uniformly bland cover [Heres a copy of the new book next to one of the supposedly ‘bullet hole’ 60s paperback editions - I know which I prefer].

I don’t know what it is with modern book jacket design, I’m sure just as much effort and time is spent on them as always was but its always the same result, generic stock photo cover with bold authors name/title. And I’m not just bitter because theres less illustrator gigs for book covers, but looking back at some of the older book jacket designs [theres often a batch on display over at the great DataJunky Blog], they just looked that much more interesting…