Books: Two Much By Donald E. Westlake (1975)

“Art doesn’t mean to tell Liz Kerwin that he has a twin. He’s on Fire Island, and she’s so beautiful that he’s willing to say anything for a chance at getting rid of her clothes. So when Liz mentions an identical twin sister, Art blurts out that he has a twin too. His name is Bart, he says, and describes the most boring man he can dream up. Liz thinks he would be perfect for her sister Betty. When Art meets Betty—who is, of course, just as lovely as her twin—she asks about his brother. Hoping for a chance at the family fortune, Art dons a pair of glasses, slicks back his hair, and soon has ‘Bart’ engaged to the sister. As his simple lie spins out of control, Art learns that wooing sisters is never as easy as it seems.”

While the back cover blurbs portends a “outrageously funny” and “a tumultuous, very funny book”, Two Much is a very serious, hard-boiled thriller that could’ve gone out more under Donald E. Westlake’s alter ego, Richard Stark. It’s somewhat of ingenious idea that could’ve only worked in the period it was set, the 1970s, before technology made it difficult to cover up some many things. Art Dodge starts out as your typical Westlake character, a somewhat happy-go-lucky small business owner whose said business is being held together with wire, string, and (sometimes), good intentions. But keeping creditors and others at bay, including the wife of a dear friend has made Dodge try another caper, one that eventually takes your standard womanizer and pushes him (unintentionally) towards a dark turn into ruthlessness.

What Westlake is great at is deftly spinning out this absurd concept, adding some fantastic tension, some surreal and dark comedy, along with questionable racist comments (which, again, does not offend me, but is a reminder –neither good nor bad- of how things have changed in the nearly 50 years this tale was first released) in a scenes that is uncomfortable to read in 2023, but is funny if you can set aside your modern feelings (which might be hard for someone who did not live through that era).

While the set-up, as I said, is ingenious, you get a sense that Westlake had some trouble resolving the story. Maybe the ruthlessness was there from the start, but went unnoticed by me, but the rushed last quarter of the book screams “I painted myself in a corner.” So I think of the book more as satire than out-and-out comedy (apparently there was a film version released in 1996, more below), and despite the simple premise (“Gordon Alworthy was five feet two inches tall and thin as the ice I was skating on”) the book is rather fun, and even if Westlake couldn't come up with a better conclusion, I don't know anyone who could have.

Touchstone Pictures released a much lighter version (called a “romantic screwball comedy”) of this tale in 1996, starring Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, and Daryl Hannah. That version of Two Much is really a remake of the French version of book, which was just as light. An Indian-Tamil language version of the Hollywood take was released in 1998.