Ep 167 The Seventh

Left burned and cleaned out after the events of The Jugger, Parker is forced to start fresh with a group of six other professional heisters targeting the cash receipts from a big weekend football game. The score itself goes off without a hitch, but a meddling amateur manages to make off with the entire boodle, including Parker's seventh of a cut! One of the legit best books of the entire series, The Seventh boasts some of author Donald Westlake's best precision plotting and most colorful characters. We typically sneer at Parker taking unnecessary risks or making bad decisions, but his bad judgment in this book is so astoundingly lopsided it's fun to just slide along as the floor falls apart beneath him. The Seventh is The Pink Smoke's eighth episode covering Westlake's Parker novels (what?! how did that happen?), and we have a great time discussing both the book and its 1968 film adaptation The Split.