Forever and a Death

April 17, 2017
This high-stakes standalone from MWA Grand Master Westlake (1933–2008) originated as a script treatment that was never used for a 1990s James Bond movie, as film producer Jeff Kleeman reveals in a fascinating afterword. Businessman Richard Curtis is out for revenge against the entire city of Hong Kong, having been driven out of the place, recently returned to China, by “mainland bastards.” He and his mostly unwitting minions plot to steal the gold from Hong Kong’s bank vaults, remove it through tunnels crisscrossing under the city, and then set off explosions in the tunnels. The explosions will create a soliton wave, causing the ground to liquefy and the buildings above to come crashing down, killing thousands but covering his tracks. George Manville, a brilliant engineer, and Kim Baldur, a volunteer with an ecological guardian group, inadvertently interfere and then fall in and out of danger as they try to figure out and thwart Curtis’s plan. Credible characters and tangible suspense distinguish this highly readable thriller, which is longer and more complex than most of Westlake’s work.

April 15, 2017
Fans of the beloved Westlake (1933-2008) will rejoice in this unexpected treat: a novel based on a treatment for a 1997 James Bond movie that the Chinese government's displeasure prevented from going into production.Approached by movie producer Jeff Kleeman, who provides an informative afterword here, about writing a sequel to Goldeneye, the first of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds, Westlake (The Getaway Car, 2014, etc.) spun out a doozy of a premise: a businessman who's been tossed out of Hong Kong just as the Chinese take over the British colony plots revenge by using a soliton to create mega-waves that will flood tunnels bored into the landfill beneath parts of the island, bringing much of the place down in piles of rubble as the villain escapes with a fortune in looted gold. (You can see why the Chinese objected.) Unfortunately for scheming construction king Richard Curtis, his warm-up, in which he uses the soliton on his own private island off the Australian coast, is witnessed by Jerry Diedrich, the environmental activist of Planetwatch, who has a special reason for keeping a close eye on Curtis, and volunteer diver Kim Baldur, who leaps into the water in defiance of Curtis engineer George Manville's no-trespassing warning moments before the soliton starts churning the waters. Against all odds, Kim survives the shock waves that follow. Curtis wants her dead anyway; Manville struggles to keep her alive. So begins a tale that caroms from Brisbane to Singapore to Hong Kong in the sturdiest Bond tradition, with all the obligatory double-crosses, counterespionage, and action set pieces you'd expect from a franchise entry that ticks off every Bond box except for Bond. What's most fascinating here, in fact, is watching Westlake thriftily remix the ingredients he originally assembled for a franchise entry into a stand-alone that's all his. Not as tough as Westlake's Richard Stark stories about Parker, not as humorous as his tales of the hapless thief Dortmunder, but a posthumous bonus fans will cherish anyway.

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June 1, 2017

In the early 1990s, the producers of the James Bond films approached the late Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster Donald Westlake (1933-2008) to write the next 007 adventure. The story the author envisioned centered on the then recent transfer of Hong Kong to Chinese control. Deciding the plot would be too controversial, the producers scrapped the movie. Westlake reworked this idea into a novel, which has never been published until now. Business titan Richard Curtis's latest real estate development is just a Ponzi scheme to acquire money for his real motive, revenge on the Chinese who kicked him out of Hong Kong after their takeover of the British colony. If enacted, his scheme will cause the physical destruction of Hong Kong and the acquisition of the gold in the city's banks. Standing in his way are an engineer, an environmental activist, and a beautiful blonde. VERDICT Westlake's fans will rejoice at the discovery of this lost thriller, which is closer in tone to the author's "Parker" series than the humorous caper Dortmunder novels. James Bond devotees will also savor this retro page-turner.--Lynnanne Pearson, Skokie P.L., IL

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2017
This newly unearthed novel by the late Westlake began life as a treatment for a James Bond movie in the mid-1990s. The movie was never made (the afterword explains why), but Westlake turned the treatment into a novel, and it's a real corker. Richard Curtis, an American businessman forced out of Hong Kong and nearly ruined when control of that city was transferred to China in 1997, is hell-bent on revenge. He's hired a brilliant engineer, George Manville, to create a devastating weapon out of the simplest of things, water. But Manville doesn't know he's creating a weapon, and when he begins to suspect Curtis has a secret agenda, he is determined to stop the insane businessman. In terms of tone and story, the novel makes a nice companion piece to two of Westlake's stand-alone thrillers of the 1980s, Kahawa and High Adventure, and, beyond that, it's great fun to read the book and speculate on what a Westlake-written Bond movie might have been like. A newly discovered novel by one of the true grand masters of the genre is always a cause for celebration.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)