Bad News by Donald E. Westlake

 

I finally found a couple of Westlake's Dortmunders. This one is a fricking blast: While there are complications and suchlike that emerge later on, there's really just the one bad decision and everything follows that. There are criminals of varying degrees of competence, Dortmunder (and his small handful of friendly acquaintances--maybe even friends) on the high end, the would-be grifters who rope Dortmunder, et al., into their scheme very much not so smart as they think they are. Westlake's prose cracks wise at just about every opportunity, but I never had the sense that either he or the characters weren't taking things seriously; that's not an easy tightrope to walk, Block walks it, Hiaasen walks it, it's rare. The characters are pretty believable and distinguishable, the pacing hums along nicely, the events all make sense within the context of the novel. A new pleasure has opened to me. Huzzah.