Books: Dancing Aztecs By Donald E. Westlake (1976)

A small South American republic has decided to capitalize on its national symbol: a prized gold statue of a dancing Aztec priest. The president asks a sculptor to make sixteen copies of it for sale abroad. The sculptor replaces the original with one of his fakes, and ships the real one to New York City for an under-the-table sale to a museum. The statues travel to America spread out among five crates, labeled to ensure that delivery goes as planned. But it doesn’t work. Asked to pick up the crate marked “E” at the airport, delivery man Jerry Manelli, confused by his client’s Spanish accent, takes crate “A” instead. The statue disappears into the city, leading him on a baffling chase, which—if he comes up with the wrong Aztec—could cost him his life.

After reading more up on Donald E. Westlake, many of his fans consider Dancing Aztecs to be his comic masterpiece, as we get swept up in a very intricately-plotted “mystery” tale that is really, really laugh-out loud funny. There are more mix-ups, more plot twists, more odd-ball New York characters than you shake a stick at here, as well as some brilliant wry observations from not only the huge cast of characters, but Westlake’s deadpan narrative tone as well, as he inserts, here and there, some amusing and wickedly droll exposition dumps about his beloved New York City and weirdos that occupy it.

There are a few great chapter opening lectures, with one about New York (“Greater New York is in someways like a house. Manhattan is the living room, with the TV and the stereo and the good furniture, where guests are entertained. Brooklyn and Queens are the bedrooms where the family sleeps, and the Bronx is the attic, full of inflammable crap that nobody has any use for. Staten Island is the backyard, and Long Island is the detached garage, so filled up with paint cans, workbenches, and a motorboat that you can’t even get the car in there anymore..”) and one about the three kinds of hangovers (“There are hangovers that are green and wet and slimy…”) which ends with “Those are the three kinds of hangovers, and Pedro had all three of them."

This is a delightfully humorous novel, even if it contains some cringe worthy comments and characters like the two Black ghetto kids that are actually written in jive talk (that took me aback some). The N word also gets thrown around (to be fair, Westlake uses that word a lot in his comic novels) and gays get called the F word, but either you’re going to get offended and upset or just accept that the whole plot is very silly (and mostly unbelievable) to begin with –because, never mind that the Aztecs aren’t from South Americans or that by weight of the gold statue would tell everyone that it isn't plaster- and just know that Westlake is a skilled enough writer to get the reader past all that.

Books: Why Me by Donald E. Westlake (1983)

“The Byzantine Fire is much more than a ninety-carat ruby. As a stone it’s worth over a million dollars, a value vastly increased by its pure gold band—but its history makes it priceless. A ring that has been fought for with sword and pen, and passed from nation to nation by all manner of theft and trickery, it finally made its way to the United States. The US has agreed to return it to Turkey, but it’s about to be stolen twice more. A gang of Greeks armed with Sten guns burst into the security room at JFK Airport and escape with the priceless stone, which they deposit in the safe at a small jeweler’s shop in Queens. A few hours later, unlucky thief John Dortmunder, expecting a routine robbery, steals it again. Much blood has been shed for this little ruby, and Dortmunder’s could be next.”

Why Me is the fifth Dortmunder novel (and the third I’ve read) by Donald E. Westlake and is a well constructed heist novel that sort of changes the character of Dortmunder. I mean, it’s a funny book, filled with both colorful rubes and a pretty nasty and very frightening Tiny Bulcher (the universe between Westlake’s more comic world of Dortmunder and his more serious noir world of Parker seems to be thinning here), but Dortmunder seems to go from competent crime planner who just happens to be having a run of bad luck to a sad sack for whom nothing goes right. This then forces John to rely on the maddening and oddly odd sidekick of Andy Kelp. Still, John’s eventual solution to his dilemma is achieved with the help of Kelp's electronics (ah, the early 1980s) is very clever and very funny. But it’s is also exasperating for his opponents (the NYPD and the FBI) and you’ll laugh out loud at how stupid some of them truly are. 

This may have been a great short story, though, as Westlake introduces many sub-plots and minor characters that seem only to work half the time. There’s this whole bit involving rival groups of foreign agents and terrorists trying to get the ruby back, and while it’s funny, it ends up never really going anywhere and is never resolved. Still, despite some of these shortcomings, it’s a wonderful book, sly and often hilarious and silly at the same time.

Books: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (2015)

“Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain. Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.”

It took me a while to get into this book, the debut novel from Becky Chambers.  The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet owes a lot to old school science fiction –the speculative work of the masters like Asimov, Clarke, and many others. It also resembles some of the more modern writers who’ve sort of taken bits of space opera and tried to make it a bit more realistic –and added some more progressive ideals about relationships between human and aliens. 

Part of my problem with the narrative is that the book is really a bunch of episodic set pieces, with pages of tech and jargon that really is interesting –if you like that stuff (and her parents are aerospace engineer and Apollo-era scientist), followed by some brief action. Yes, there was some central themes through out the book, but there was no real point, no real thrust to the crews journey. Also, since I really grew up on the space opera genre, I’ve always found hard sci-fi a bit dry and dusty, which is why I rarely read the genre (even though the postulate very interesting ideas, some space opera sort of ignores in favor of action). It’s not that it’s not interesting; I just don’t find it engaging on an emotional level. And, I guess, on an intellectual level, as well, these books make me feel sort of an idiot.

While the technology is a bit weird, Chambers does create some wonderful and easily identifiable characters –this was something I latched onto and kept me reading. I liked that the author did not drag out the mystery of Rosemary’s past, but I also found her to be the most irritating of the lot. I mean, when her past does resurface, it’s handled in an okay way, but I found the crews forgiveness a bit…too much.

This is also a novel that would really not appeal to old-school sci-fi readers, as the book can be a bit progressive in nature. The idea is that everyone, including Lovely (AKA as Lovelace) the AI that runs Wayfarer, has a right to exist (and the sub-plot of Jenks falling in love with the AI and Lovely apparently falling in love with Jenks is interesting).

All in all not a bad book, but (like many others) could’ve been trimmed by about 40 or 50 pages.