Richard Stark, The Man with the Getaway Face

This is the second of 24 Parker novels by Richard Stark (aka Donald E. Westlake). Parker isn't the kind of protagonist you root for, exactly. He's a criminal, a thief and sometime killer. He's amoral. He's not very nice to women—or men, for that matter. But he's very professional, and there's something compelling about watching him plan and execute crimes. And since the early Parker novels were written in the 1960s, there's an added historical interest to them. They're gritty and dirty, and everything goes down in a simpler, meaner, pre-traffic camera world, in big hulking Chevies and Fords. In this outing, we're along for the ride as Parker plans an armored car heist and deals with an unexpected problem related to his recent facelift. I doubt I'd ever do it, but it would be fun to read all 24 Parker books in order, one after the other, and since they're fast reads, it wouldn't be a very difficult undertaking.