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...
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...