Since I discovered Donald Westlake's books last year, I have continued to enjoy each and every novel I pick up by him. I've noticed he writes both serious hard-boiled crime as well as lighter more humorous crime stories. This book is definitely of that second variety.The plot surrounds Chet, a ...
I am a fan of the Hard Case Crime books, and since moving to Titan Books, they have upgraded their packaging of the books without losing any of the quality. I was looking forward to The Comedy Is Finished as a lost Westlake book. It is set in the waning days of the 1970’s as a bunch of leftover...
Would you be wary if someone gave you the assignment of delivering five million dollars to a Philippine terrorist—never mind from whom or why? Booth Stallings, a terrorism expert just fired from his job at a bashful organization that never admitted its mount in the Washington merry-go-round, is w...
Imagine a man, a wealthy man, who began life with sufficient money, but chose to live his life solely in the pursuit of even more money and did so using his one bona-fide talent: fleecing other people, companies, and governments. Couldn’t happen here could it? Well, with that premise, Donald W...
Although I have been steadily working my way through the Dortmunder canon, it’s hard to believe that I know only have two to go. Watch Your Back! Is the twelfth novel in the series and tries to freshen up a bit by adding a few new players and expanding the action (if ever so briefly) to the Carib...
A big tobacco firm, eager to find a suitable distraction in non-smoking-related cancers, has been quietly funding some melanoma research. It has developed some potions that have been vaguely plausible with mice, albeit turning them rather translucent, but they're not quite sure how to find human ...
I have to admit that I have a weakness for Donald E Westlake books. In particular I found his 'Dortmunder' books about some really inefficient minor criminals, really amusing; particularly 'Bank Shot'. Westlake writes with a similar style to Elmore Leonard, and having written well over a hundred ...
The men in the tan-and-cream Chrysler came with guns blazing. When Ray Kelly woke up in the hospital, it was a month later, he was missing an eye, and his father was dead. Then things started to get bad.
Hired to locate Amy Denovo's long-lost father, Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, discover that the missing man has a deadly and dangerous secret to hide. Reissue. NYT.
Westlake era un maledetto genio e pazzo. Non so altrimenti come possa aver scritto un romanzo simile, così articolato, così complesso e così fuori di testa da risultare irreale!!! :DADORO Westlake, anche se questo romanzo un po' risente del suo periodo e va molto contestualizzato, perché oggi cer...
Like many before it, I was inclined to try the “Dortmunder” series by reading Dan’s comments about it. (At least I got that part right.) For some reason, when I went to order a couple of the books, the newest electronic catalog software presented me with only a subset of all of the novels.(Aside ...
1.My dad told me a story about something he used to do. Back in the dark ages, when people didn't use the internet they relied on other means for doing things that we now do with just a few keystrokes.For example, if you're in the construction industry today, and you are a salesman you can log on...
Ma première rencontre avec Westlake, ses phrases définitives, désabusées et hilarantes, ("Boy ressemblait de plus en plus à quelque chose que l'on aurait dû enterrer une semaine plus tôt"), sa description outrée mais qui vise juste des médias (le patron de presse tyrannique qui installe son burea...
I find the cover of this book a bit misleading. Blame it on the title though. One, (me and um, Karen, who made a joke at my expense about the type of book I was reading) might think that the title refers to an attractive woman, like the one who is being signified by the cover artwork. Like, hey t...
The Hot Rock introduces John Archibald Dortmunder, the thief whose capers never quite come off, as he and his convict friends plot to steal the fabulous Balaboma Emerald.
Αυτό είναι μόλις το δεύτερο βιβλίο του τρομερού Ντόναλντ Γουέστλεϊκ που διαβάζω, μετά το ξεκαρδιστικό Βοήθεια! Με κρατούν φυλακισμένο που είχα διαβάσει πριν από τρία και πλέον χρόνια. Ο Γουέστλεϊκ έχει γράψει με το ψευδώνυμο Ρίτσαρντ Σταρκ την πασίγνωστη αστυνομική σειρά Πάρκερ και με το κανονικό...
With the third installment the author decided it wasn’t sufficient to cause the gang to fail based on their own. No, this time, he makes them fail while following a caper that appears in a crime novel. Andy Kelp has been in a local pokey for a few days and while he was eventually let go, he had...
Dortmunder and company get hired to steal the femur of St. Ferghana so that Tsergovia will get the favor of an archbishop and be admitted into the United Nations. Unfortunately, things go south, Dortmunder winds up kidnapped and Andy Kelp leads the charge to steal the bone a second time. Will D...
Why Me is the fifth book in this series. I’ve read the first three in order, but couldn’t easily get a copy of the fourth novel, Nobody’s Perfect. That’s too bad as some of the later book’s characteristics (e.g. Andy Kelp always letting himself in to John & May’s apartment) must have been establi...
This is the longest Dortmunder novel coming in at 422 pages in the 1990 Mysterious Press edition. In The Hot Rock length is achieved by having the team perform multiple jobs to cope with a cascading series of problems. Each new caper is tightly defined and once the initial disbelief is overcome, ...
Good Behavior I had one of those commuter days where I had to change trains a lot in order to get to Chicago’s McCormick Place in order to meet a friend. Knowing I was going to spend a large part of my day on trains, I took Good Behavior with me. I finished it on my way home that night. That mean...
This is a non-fiction of Westlake, an author I really enjoy reading.This is a departure by going non-fiction.Quite the off the wall story of mismanagement, mishandling, and mishagahss of the British empire in decline and with imperialistic incompetency.Westlake describes the British invasion of t...
Donald Westlake is the ackowledge master of the comic caper. Starting with 1965's "The Fugitve Pigeon", he had a run of very funny madcap novels before introducing the John Dortmunder hapless crook series. "A Likely Story", however, was rejected by many publishers because it did not fall into t...
From ISawLightningFall.comWhen an author tries something new, fans often react with equal parts anticipation and fear. This is doubly true when said author has a track list as long as your arm. Take Donald Westlake, who managed to pen over a hundred novels in his lifetime. Readers knew to expect ...
Bad News is just darn likeable. There’s no better way to describe it. It’s like that guy who everybody seems to be friends with and you can’t really say anything bad about him because he’s just so likeable. And you like him, too, you know? Almost despite yourself. Bad News is that. It’s not mind-...
This is an interesting combination of two early Westlake pieces: a novel, "A Travesty," and a novelette, "Ordo." I'm particularly surprised that "A Travesty" was never acquired as a film property (if it was, I'm not aware of it). The darkly delightful plot involves a sexually voracious film revie...
These Five Star Mystery series titles are carefully selected to appeal to a broad range of genre fans and include all subgenres of mystery: romantic suspense, traditional mysteries, private eye novels, cozies, hard-boiled detectives, and short story collections.Disgraced ex-cop Mitch Tobin makes ...
At a mental institution, Mitch Tobin searches for a patient with a violent sense of humor Mitch Tobin is about to be committed. Since his abrupt dismissal from the NYPD, Tobin’s nerves have been frayed, and if it wasn’t for his work as a private detective, he might well be in need of actual psyc...
Meet Tom and Joe. They've got homes on Long Island and a dream: to pull off the perfect heist. Tom and Joe also have badges, uniforms and guns, just like the rest of the New York City police force! These two shining examples of New York's Finest don't care what they steal or how, as long as it co...
An apparently rare collection of science fiction and light fantasy stories with a crime/noir twist from Donald Westlake, creator of Parker and Dortmunder, that shows a lot of promise in a genre somewhat beyond his comfort zone.Whilst the title "Tomorrow's Crimes" brings to mind Blade Runner and o...
A young man on the make who writes dirty greeting cards for a living. Beautiful twin heiresses. A greedy lawyer in charge of their fortune.
In the late 50s and early 60s, author Donald E. Westlake, then just getting started, sold four short stories about a mild-mannered police detective named Abe Levine to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Levine's unique angle was that he was acutely aware of his mortality; he's in the habit of c...
Mitchell Tobin is back, in a novel as uncompromising, as hard and reflective as his debut in Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death. Dismissed from the New York City Police Department, Tobin wants only to remain at home behind a wall of his own making, but instead finds himself thrust into a case that beg...
But it was very early for him—not yet seven-thirty in the morning—and his eyes were still full of sleep. He opened the apartment door and blinked at me, standing there in my gray uniform, and said, “Yeah? What can I do for you?” “You can back up, Dink,” I said. “And you can keep your hands where ...
THE HORSE LOOKED AT Dortmunder. “Ugly goddamn thing,” Dortmunder commented, while the horse just rolled his eyes in disbelief. “Not that one,” the old coot said. “We’re looking for a black stallion.” “In the dark,” Dortmunder pointed out. “Anyway, all horses look the same to me.” “It’s not how th...
This time, he let it go on blinking while he showered and shaved and brushed teeth. Then, wrapped in a towel, he listened to the message, which was Goldfarb: “Call me.” Well, that was succinct. Meehan hadn't had to memorize Goldfarb's number, since it was okay within the ten thousand rules for hi...
He assured me they were investigating possibilities other than the guilt of Kit Markowitz, meaning they were still checking into the five original male suspects. I asked him the questions Kit had assigned me, and he said no, they hadn’t established solid alibis for Jay English or Dave Poumon, mos...
Westlake @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } DONALD E.WESTLAKE Copyright © 2003 by Donald E. Westlake The doggerel in chapter 50 is by Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819-61. 1 WHEN THE FIRST CHECK came in, Josh Redmont, who was then twenty-seven, had no idea what it was f...
Except for Bruce Maundy, none of my suspects had yet departed; in fact, I was almost the first to leave. Jerry Weissman had attempted to distribute his coffee and cookies about an hour before, with very limited success, and the party I left was almost exactly the same as the party I’d arrived at ...