Andy Kelp thinks he’s stumbled on to
the perfect caper for John Dortmunder. He’s read a book called "Child Heist" by Richard Stark that tells the story of a criminal called Parker and his gang who
kidnap and ransom off a kid. Dortmunder is a thief, a burglar, not a kidnapper
and does not take to Kelp’s idea at first (if only because he’s the brains of
their gang and hates the idea using someone else’s plans). However, May, John’s
incessantly smoking girlfriend,
eventually convinces him it can work, despite their recent track record. Deciding
to follow the plan laid out in Stark’s book, Dortmunder and his caper buddies seek
out and locate a rich kid to nab. Naturally, things go horribly and hilariously
wrong from that first step.
While Jimmy the Kid is Donald E. Westlake’s modern (for 1974) reworking
of the O. Henry’s The Ransom of Red Chief, in a roundabout way, Westlake
sort of admitted that real inspiration for this third book in his Dortmunder
series may have been the 1953 Lionel White novel The Snatchers. While Westlake’s
novel and White’s are completely different books, with different scenarios and
endings, they share some of the same DNA, apparently. And of those similarities,
though, has nothing to do with John Dortmunder, but the main character of Cal
Dent in The Snatchers may have inspired Richard Stark’s Parker character (who
was, of course, created by Donald E. Westlake).
It’s a good bet as well, that in 1974, no one knew that
Westlake was Richard Stark, so the idea that Westlake was using an unpublished
(and non-existent) Stark novel (called Child Heist) for the premise of Jimmy the Kid made for a
meta moment (even if that word did not exist then). It was also that year that
Westlake had made a decision to end writing the Parker novels with the sixteenth novel novel, Butcher’s Moon (maybe writing in Parker’s nihilistic universe was
having adverse effects on Westlake health? He would return, though, to the
character in 1997 and release 8 more books in that series under the Richard
Stark pen name, with the last one released only 8 months before his death in 2008).
Jimmy the Kid contains three chapters featuring Parker, so any Stark fan would’ve
been delighted to find these snippets in a humorous caper novel. And author
Richard Stark has a special appearance at the end of the book where he writes a
letter to his lawyer that a movie based on the events of Jimmy the Kid are a
rip off from the plot of his book, Child Heist (again, meta much?).
Out of the first three John Dortmunder (Hot Rocks, Bank
Job), Jimmy the Kid could be the weakest. It’s funny, but it sometimes falls
into too much slapstick. The kid is a bit obnoxious, but to be honest, in the 45 years
since its publication, the kids antics are not that bad –Jimmy could be a
template for the Home Alone franchise (he’s just not that cartoonishy violent), though.
The plot is rather clever, but for many long-time fans of Richard Stark, the
real charm of this book is seeing the juxtaposition of Parker’s thriller
universe mashed with John Dortmunder’s comic bad luck world. It works only
because Westlake is that good and even a weak Dortmunder book is better than 52
books a year James Patterson “writes.”
Incidentally, there was a film version of Jimmy the Kid
released in late 1982 (though made in 1981). It starred Paul Le Mat, Ruth
Gordon, Dee Wallace (made before ET, but released after it), Cleavon Little,
Pat Morita, Don Adams, and Gary Coleman as Jimmy. I watched it on Youtube and
it’s a pretty horrible film. It takes the basic premise of Westlake’s novel,
some set pieces, but mainly trashes and changes everything else. While everyone’s
performances are fine, the addition of Don Adams Harry Walker (who for some
reasons also narrates) as a bumbling detective in the vein of his Get Smart
role makes an unfunny film even unfunnier. These film versions are why a lot of
authors hate selling their books to Hollywood.
