Poor John Dortmunder has such bad luck that things go sideways for him even when he’s stealing from a guy who is helping him do it.
After Dortmunder gePoor John Dortmunder has such bad luck that things go sideways for him even when he’s stealing from a guy who is helping him do it.
After Dortmunder gets caught in the act of stealing TVs out of a repair shop he seems certain to be heading back to prison for a long stay, but a high-priced defense attorney suddenly shows up and does the kind of court room magic that keeps guys like Robert Durst running around loose for years. It turns out that the lawyer has been looking for a thief who met a certain kind of criteria to pull a job for another client of his, Chauncey. Dortmunder meets Chauncey, a wealthy man who is short of cash in only the way that the rich can be while still being rich, and Chauncey has an idea for them both to make some money.
The plan is that Dortmunder will steal a valuable painting as well as some other goodies when Chauncey has a house full of wealthy friends around. Dortmunder holds the painting for collateral until Chauncey collects the insurance, and he’ll pay Dortmunder a healthy portion of the settlement. Then Dortmunder will return the painting to Chauncey who will hide it away where he can still appreciate it. And just to make sure that Dortmunder doesn’t try anything cute like try to sell the painting for himself, Chauncey has also hired a hit man who has instructions to kill Dortmunder if the painting isn’t returned to him.
Dortmunder isn’t thrilled with the hit man angle, but since he isn’t planning on doing any double crosses he doesn’t sweat it much as he puts together his usual crew of misfits to pull off a heist that will look legit to the insurance company. As usual in a Dortmunder caper, there are some complications that arise that make the threat of the hitman suddenly become a lot more hazardous.
I never fail to be amazed when reading the funny misadventures of Dortmunder that they’re written by the same guy who also created the ultimate humorless anti-hero in the very serious Parker series under the Richard Stark pen name. It shows how versatile Westlake was that he could create two series that are both about professional thieves and yet make them so completely different.
While I prefer the hard-boiled stories of Parker’s heists, I also quite enjoy the Dortmunder stories. There’s nothing knee-slapping hilarious in these books although they often turn into outright farces, but there’s a certain slyness to Westlake’s wit that I find very appealing. There’s also a kind of low-key charm to the gloomy Dortmunder and his buddies, and it’s always fun to see what kind of trouble they’re getting into.
This one is a little odd in that it ends in a kind of open ended way that really leaves a lot of loose threads hanging out there. These aren't the kind of books where everything needs to be wrapped in neatly to be satisfying, but Westlake usually did a better job of resolving Dortmunder’s problems. This one seems like he couldn’t really figure a way out so he just ended it on a joke instead, and that’s slightly disappointing. ...more
After a couple of weeks of expensive home repairs, tornado sirens regularly wailing in the background and reading Emma Donoghue’s excellent but ultra-After a couple of weeks of expensive home repairs, tornado sirens regularly wailing in the background and reading Emma Donoghue’s excellent but ultra-depressing Room, I really needed a laugh. Fortunately, I had a Donald Westlake Dortmunder novel I hadn’t read yet mounted in a glass box on the wall with a sign that read: BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY NEED FOR CHUCKLES And once again, Westlake came through for me.
Sad-sack thief John Dortmunder is fleeing across New York rooftops from a botched robbery when he ends up in a convent full of nuns who have taken a vow of silence. John is shocked that the nuns hide him from the cops, and he is told (via notes) that one of their own, Sister Mary Grace, was kidnapped by her rich and powerful father who is holding her in a high-security penthouse while he tries to have her ’deprogrammed’ to forget about her vows. The nuns want John to break into the building where she’s being held and free Sister Mary Grace.
Not only does Dortmunder have to try and find a way to get a crew interested in a non-profit breaking-and-entering at a highly secured building, he’ll also have to deal with a horny ex-con, a former porno star running mail order scams, and a small army of mercenaries that Sister Mary Grace’s father is housing at the building while they get ready to overthrow a third world country on his behalf. If that isn’t enough, Dortmunder is also being sued by the backer of the original robbery that went wrong for the return of the front money. Can Dortmunder rescue the nun and find a way to steal some loot along the way?
Reading a Dortmunder book after checking out the recently released Parker reprints (Written by Westlake under the name Richard Stark.) was interesting because I noticed a lot of similarities between the two professional thieves. Both are the brains of their operations that have to come up with elaborate plans to carry out their jobs, and both have to put up with annoying people to get the job done, although Parker tends to leave his irritations in a shallow grave while Dortmunder grits his teeth and endures. They also share a desire to just get the money and get back to their girlfriends, but Dortmunder’s idea of bliss is having a beer and watching TV with May in their apartment while Parker likes to travel and live in resort hotels with Claire.
It’s intriguing to see how Westlake could take characters who share a profession and many traits and then watch him turn one into the cold blooded anti-hero of crime novels and then play the other for laughs as a gloomy thief with incredibly bad luck.
If you’re looking for something fast and funny with criminal flavor, you can’t do much better than Dortmunder....more
Dortmunder has had a long dry spell as far as opportunities to steal valuables, and the gloomy thief has been reduced to running a scam pretending to Dortmunder has had a long dry spell as far as opportunities to steal valuables, and the gloomy thief has been reduced to running a scam pretending to sell encyclopedias door-to-door. However, his friend Kelp has a nephew, Victor, who has an idea for a job. Victor has an obsession for old school pulp fiction and is a former FBI agent who had to leave the Bureau after trying to promote the idea that the feds needed a secret handshake.
Despite his over-excitement at working with an actual crew of professional criminals, Victor has come up with a potentially lucrative idea. A bank is being remodeled and they’ve put a specially designed trailer nearby to handle business while the construction is on-going. One night a week, a large amount of cash is in the safe of the trailer along with some armed guards.
And what’s the best way to steal a trailer? Why, you just hook up a truck and drive it off to work on cracking the safe at your leisure. At least, that was the plan. But when Dortmunder and his crew are involved, you know it can’t be that easy.
This is the second Dortmunder novel, but I think it may be one of the funniest of them I’ve read. There’s a lot of hilarious characters and dialogue. One bit of unintentional humor was that this was written in 1975, and there’s a long conversation where the thieves are complaining about how no one uses money anymore. It’s all checks and credit cards, and they moan that there won’t be any cash left to steal before too long, and this was long before debit cards or e-commerce. Fortunately, they managed to find enough to steal to keep us entertained for the rest of the series. ...more
It turns out that short stories about luckless professional thief John Dortmunder are just as enjoyable as his novel length adventures.
As the late DonIt turns out that short stories about luckless professional thief John Dortmunder are just as enjoyable as his novel length adventures.
As the late Donald Westlake explains in a brief introduction, he never planned for Dortmunder to be more than the main character in a single novel, but that turned into a very successful series. Over the years, he’d have the occasional odd idea that wasn’t enough for a novel, and somehow found that he’d written enough short stories for a collection.
Most of these are what you’d expect for stories about the gloomy thief who constantly finds himself pulled into elaborate and outlandish schemes. My favorite one in this collection is Too Many Crooks . Dortmunder and his buddy Andy Kelp tunnel into a bank vault after closing time only to find out that the bank was being robbed by somebody else and the vault is full of hostages. Hilarity ensues.
One of the more interesting things in the book isn’t a story. Westlake explains in the introduction that it once looked like he might lose the rights to the Dortmunder character due to the assholery of some Hollywood lawyers. (I assume that this is related to the movie version of The Hot Rock.) In case he lost the legal battle, Westlake had a plan to have the main characters operate under new names after being wanted by the police, but he had problems coming up with a suitable name for Dortmunder.
He finally decided on the name of John Rumsey, but Westlake was shocked to realize that when he tried to write a novel with the different names that Dortmunder became different despite the fact he was supposed to be the same exact guy. As Westlake comically explains it, Rumsey was shorter than Dortmunder.
The lawsuit was eventually dropped, but Westlake included a John Rumsey story. To Westlake, Rumsey and his cohorts are a version of Dortmunder and his gang from a parallel universe where everything is slightly different. It was a fun twist to add to the collection....more
John Dortmunder gets out of prison and immediately begins planning his next heist. Unfortunately, the job turns out be a version of Groundhog Day and John Dortmunder gets out of prison and immediately begins planning his next heist. Unfortunately, the job turns out be a version of Groundhog Day and Dortmunder and his crew will have to keep stealing a priceless emerald over and over and over again.
This edition of The Hot Rock had an introduction from the late Donald Westlake where he explained that he originally thought of the basic plot for this as one of his Parker crime novels he wrote as Richard Stark. However, he realized that the ultra-serious Parker would never tolerate the repeated robberies so he invented John Dortmunder and changed it to a comedy. That’s a great little example of what continues to amaze me about the way Westlake was able to carve out various niches within the crime/mystery genre.
In this first book, Westlake establishes the Dortmunder universe where a variety of off-beat characters like his chatty friend Kelp and car-obsessed driver Stan Murch would become part of his regular robbery crew. It also gives us the formula that we’d get for the rest of the series. The guys want to pull a job, but there’s some kind of odd complication or problem that either makes the job or it’s aftermath one problem after another. Bad luck and trouble would follow gloomy Dortmunder throughout the series. Sometimes he’d get the loot and sometimes he wouldn’t, but he’d always be good for a lot of laughs along the way....more
I'm assuming that this is the last new Dortmunder book since it was published after Westlake's death, and it's a very funny reminder of what's great aI'm assuming that this is the last new Dortmunder book since it was published after Westlake's death, and it's a very funny reminder of what's great about Westlake's comic writing. And it makes me more determined than ever to avoid reality television by any means necessary.
Professional thief Dortmunder and his crew get an unlikely offer to star in a reality series where the planning and execution of a robbery will be televised. Dortmunder and his friends aren't wild about filming their illegal activities, but since they don't have better options for any lucrative criminal activity, they decide to play along to see what they can steal along the way. As production starts, the gang quickly finds out that there's little reality in reality television, and they keep working their own angles to pull a very real heist while pretending to plan one.
This follows the standard Dortmunder formula. The regulars make their appearances, and as usual, gloomy Dortmunder has to deal with a bizarre situation when all he wants to do is make an honest living stealing. The behind-the-curtain look at reality television makes for some of the biggest laughs.
But the death of Westlake puts a layer of nostalgia and a feeling of farewell in this one that makes it pretty bittersweet. If this is the last we see of Dortmunder and his motley crew, then it's a fitting goodbye....more
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