Books: Watch Your Back! By Donald E. Westlake (2005)

“John Dortmunder’s long-time fence  and, at times, mildly offensive Arnie Albright, returns from his ‘intervention’ (a subplot included in the last book, The Road to Ruin) from Club Med and tells Dortmunder about one Preston Fareweather, a billionaire reprobate financier who has been hiding in the Caribbean due to his many ex-wives is the States. Albright wants John and his fellow lawbreakers to rob Fareweather’s long-empty penthouse in the heart of New York. But when the motley entourage gathers to discuss the heist, they're confronted with the grim reality that their longtime meeting place--The O. J. Bar & Grill--is being squeezed by the Mob. Mayhem ensues as Dortmunder must divide his abbreviated attention span between scoring the booty and saving the pub.”

Like any aging series –book, movies, TV- you have to add more and more sideline stuff because what more can you add about the series core characters that you have not already said? Such as what happens with the twelfth John Dortmunder tale, Watch Your Back! While Westlake’s way of producing smooth, relaxed prose continues here, we end up with three plot lines that seemly add a bit of heaviness to what was once a lean series. This is something I sort of noted in these latter books, something I think comes from reading a lot of Stephen King, is Westlake’s sudden obsession with too much detail –a lot of it is surprisingly unrelated to the plot. I expect King to do this, creating back stories to almost every minor character in his books, but it’s a surprise coming from Westlake, who was known more for tales that were lean and to the point (especially with his Richard Stark tales of Parker). A lot of Fareweather’s adventures in Club Med seem pointless, and only becomes an elaborate plot to get him back to the United States. It could’ve been handled more efficiently than here.

We are also introduced to a new character, one 19 year-old Judson Blint, who seemly falls into the old TV cliché of having someone young and fresh enter the aging gangs life (like when someone has a baby or Dawn is suddenly created as a sister for Buffy Sommers). Whether he continues in the upcoming final two installments is yet to be known by me, but he was alright and did not distract from rest of our bumbling team. The three plots do come together in a satisfactory fashion at the end, though, and the gang is front and center for most of the story, which is always much more fun for me. It’s still an enjoyable book and worth the time to read.