“It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times–1874–when Gabe Beauchamps, former Hell’s Kitchen
gangster was ‘helped’ to leave New York by ‘Boss’ Twill. His destination,
chosen by Twill, is San Francisco where he arrives penniless, seasick and
almost friendless. Apart from Vangie, a ravishing female pickpocket, the only
part of San Francisco that impresses Gabe is the Mint with its heavily guarded
gold shipments. With Vangie’s reluctant help Gabe assembles a team of unlikely
but unscrupulous associates to carry out the Great Mint Robbery.”
When it was released, the
authors describe their book as the world’s first comedy-romance-suspense-pirate-western- adventure novel. Donald Westlake –even way back then- had
established himself as the master of comedy thrillers. This was the only
collaboration between him and Brian Garfield (writer of the original novel
Death Wish, which became a huge movie franchise during the 1970s. In some
respect, while Garfield’s book became more famous than anything Westlake ever
wrote, in the end, it's why today in 2023, Death Wish is only really remembered because of the Charles Bronson movies; it had a terrific screenplay - at least for the first one, anyways).
Anyways, as well, in an interview, Garfield talked about this partnership:
“Don Westlake had a blinding-fast mind. He always seemed to have on the tip of his tongue the sort of wonderful witty rejoinders that occur to most of us a day or two too late. In 1970 we got the idea that it would be amusing to try combining our strengths in a Western comedy novel. We wrote Gangway!, and it turned out to be quite funny, I think. Henry sold it and it did fairly well. But our ambitions to sell it as a basis for a movie didn’t work out. And we’d done it in a silly way—each of us would write a draft, then turn it over to the other, who’d rewrite the whole thing and give it back. It was about four times as much work as either of us would have put in individually on a book. So we didn’t try that again. But it was fun, and we got to know each other’s working styles.”
With that in mind, even hardcore Westlake followers could not tell who wrote what:
“You can make educated guesses, but here’s the thing–each man was well-familiar with the work of the other, and Garfield in particular was very influenced by Westlake, so even if you see something that strikes you as very much a Westlake plot twist, or a Westlake character, or a Westlake gag–could just be Garfield channeling Westlake. Less likely it would be the other way around, since Garfield’s style was still evolving at this point, but Westlake would have tried to make his stuff match-up with Garfield’s, and might have deferred to him more since Garfield knew this genre (and the geographic region it’s set in) so much better.” –The Westlake Reader.
So yes, it’s a comic caper novel, with a flawed hero (who gets seasick very easily). It’s very much a proto John Dortmunder novel – it’s possible he was writing The Hot Rock at the same time this was being worked on. As noted Garfield mentioned they started talking about this around 1970, with The Hot Rock being released in 1972. It’s actually not bad book; it’s enjoyable light reading, at best and approached with limited expectations because while Westlake was prolific, not everything he released was genius level of most of his other work. There is also a sense that here at least (especially when Westlake steps out of his beloved New York, he seems a bit lost) that collaboration here, while fun, also show the limitations of it –that maybe two heads were not necessarily better than one.
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