What's So Funny?

Westlake gives us another entry in the ongoing saga of John Dortmunder, the thinking man's burglar, and his band of unusual thieves. As is often the case in these romps through New York City and surrounds, the rest of the characters are sufficiently weird to make Dortmunder's crew seem almost conventional. Conventional or weird, they are all read with great delight by William Dufris, who has narrated all of the Dortmunder escapades. Longtime listeners will recognize regular characters from their voices alone; everyone else can take pleasure in meeting them for the first time. Dufris does not play the craziness for laughs, and that choice makes the book even more entertaining. You can almost believe in these characters. R.E.K. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

February 19, 2007
In Westlake's diverting 13th John Dortmunder novel (after 2004's Watch Your Back!
), the hapless crook gets blackmailed into trying to pull off an impossible heist—stealing a gold chess set originally intended as a gift for the last czar of Russia, but picked up by some U.S. soldiers who were part of an anti-Soviet expeditionary force in 1919–1920 and now kept secure in a midtown Manhattan basement vault while various parties dispute its ownership. Dortmunder makes little progress in the book's first half, until he figures out a way to prompt an inquiry that leads to the chess set's being transported downtown—to a location that proves far from secure. As usual, Westlake provides amusing, at times dim-witted dialogue, particularly among the regulars at O.J.'s Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue, and a cast of appealing if often inept cops and robbers. Not every loose end may be tied up, but the ironic resolution will leave both series fans and newcomers satisfied.