Books: God Save The Mark by Donald E. Westlake (1968)

“A mark is a noun and defined  in Dictionary of American Slang, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1960 as an easy victim; a ready subject for the practices of a confidence man, thief, beggar, etc.; a sucker. That's the long definition of a mark. But there's a shorter one.

It goes: * mark n. Fred Fitch

What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western Hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money machine. When Barnum said, "There's one born every minute, and two to take him," he didn't know about Fred Fitch; when Fred Fitch was born, there were two million to take him. Every itinerant grifter, hypester, bunk artist, short-conner, amuser, shearer, short-changer, green-goods worker, pennyweighter, ring dropper, and yentzer to hit New York City considers his trip incomplete until he's also hit Fred Fitch. He's sort of the con-man's version of Go: Pass Fred Fitch, collect two hundred dollars, and move on. What happens to Fred Fitch when his long-lost Uncle Matt dies and leaves Fred three hundred thousand dollars shouldn't happen to the ball in a pinball machine. Fred Fitch with three hundred thousand dollars is like a mouse with a sack of catnip: He's likely to attract the wrong kind of attention. Add to this the fact that Uncle Matt was murdered, by person or persons unknown, and that someone now seems determined to murder Fred as well, mix in two daffily charming beauties of totally different types, and you have a perfect setup for the busiest fictional hero since the well-known one-armed paperhanger. As Fred Fitch careers across the New York City landscape-and sometimes skyline-in his meetings with cops, con men, beautiful girls, and (maybe) murderers, he takes on some of the loonier aspects of a Dante without a Virgil.”

God Save the Mark enjoys the distinction of being the only novel Donald E. Westlake ever wrote that won an Edgar Award –it beat out in Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. It is also another funny novel by the master of capers and things that go wrong with the capers. I’m unsure if there are people like Fred Fitch in real life, because he seems rather clueless for a thirty-one year-old man (though as I read the book, I sort of felt Fred was way older). It makes you wonder how he’s functioned so far. Still, he is an interesting character and the book is just another delightful romp from the prolific Westlake.

I do enjoy the style, the setting (New York in the 60’s and 70’s) and the observational humor, the drollness of supporting characters. While Westlake wrote under numerous pseudonyms, I need to start reading his Parker novels he wrote under the Richard Stark moniker –as I’ve been told multiple times that voice, that Stark voice is much different than the books written using his real name (and Westlake had maybe close to a dozen different names he wrote under (just like his friend Lawrence Block).

I’ve got plenty to read in 2020, so we’ll see how it goes. I would really like to achieve reading two books a month, but the internet and TV provide numerous distractions. But it’s a plan, a goal, or maybe hopeful thinking.

Anyways…Happy New Year and let’s start new decade off.  

Books: Burglars Can’t Be Choosers By Lawrence Block (1977)

Bernie Rhodenbarr is a personable chap, a good neighbor, a passable poker player. His chosen profession, however, might not sit well with some. Bernie is a burglar, a good one, effortlessly lifting valuables from the not-so-well-protected abodes of well-to-do New Yorkers like a modern-day Robin Hood. (The poor, as Bernie would be the first to tell you, alas, have nothing worth stealing.) He's not perfect, however; he occasionally makes mistakes. Like accepting a paid assignment from a total stranger to retrieve a particular item from a rich man's apartment. Like still being there when the cops arrive. Like having a freshly slain corpse lying in the next room, and no proof that Bernie isn't the killer. Now he's really got his hands full, having to locate the true perpetrator while somehow eluding the police -- a dirty job indeed, but if Bernie doesn't do it, who will?

Lawrence Block, much like fellow crime writer Donald E. Westlake, has spent his prolific writing career two series, one featuring the dark, often violent world of PI Matthew Scudder and often comic, bumbling world of “the gentleman burglar” Bernie Rhodenbarr. Westlake was known as Richard Stark when he wrote the nihilistic world of Parker, but used his real name for the John Dortmunder tales. Both of Block’s series are set in New York (same as Westlake/Stark), but where the Scudder world has little humor, the world of Rhodenbarr is often hilarious.

Burglars Can’t Be Choosers is Rhodenbarr’s first adventure, and we are quickly introduced to this mild manner 34 year-old Robin Hood of a sort (he generally chooses well-off targets who can afford the losses). He knows his stuff, especially locks, and he is also not a violent man and abhors the idea of any violent confrontation. While he steals only when he needs something, works alone, and always chooses his own targets, here he is hired for $5,000 (in 1977 money) to steal a “blue box”. But things go quickly sideways when the cops show up because someone heard noises, and then the cops discover a dead body.

At its core, it’s a whodunit, even a “locked room” mystery one at that. Its fun read, often humorous but not laughs out loud funny the way Westlake’s Dortmunder books can be. There is eleven books in the Rhodenbarr series, so I’ll see if I can get through some.

Books: The Forbidden Stars By Tim Pratt (2019)

"Aliens known as the Liars gave humanity access to the stars through twenty-nine wormholes. They didn’t mention that other aliens, the ancient, tyrannical – but thankfully sleeping – Axiom occupied all the other systems. When the twenty-ninth fell silent, humanity chalked it up to radical separatists and moved on. But now, on board the White Raven, Captain Callie and her crew of Axiom-hunters receive word that the twenty-ninth colony may have met a very different fate. With their bridge generator they skip past the wormhole, and discover another Axiom project, fully awake, and poised to pour through the wormhole gate into all the worlds of humanity."

The Forbidden Stars is the enjoyable final installment to the Axiom trilogy. Unlike book two, this one jumps right into the action, not spending a lot of time recapping what came before. I would also like to praise that this trilogy also has a satisfying ending, even if it depends on some aspect of deus ex machina going for it (and I can somewhat forgive it for the ease with in which the crew of White Raven achieves everything they set out to do).

As I’ve said before, this series is clearly a cousin to The Expanse books, but instead of being a cheap knock-off, author Tim Pratt has some fun with the space opera format, most notably by adding more humor and less politics. And like the James S.A. Corey’s series, it is set in a very diverse universe, so those who’ve been critical of The Expanse for both its politics and diverseness, will be somewhat disappointed. But for those who like that series, I believe you can find something to like in this series.

This trilogy also reminded me of the trilogies I read in the 1980s, with tales that took three books to tell and where generally less than 450 pages long. I miss this in publishing, in many ways, especially for this genre. I’ve grown weary of series that span five, six, seven or more books, each at 800 to 1,000 pages; its overkill and unnecessary. 

Books: The Silver Pigs By Lindsey Davis (1989)

"When Marcus Didius Falco, a Roman 'informer' who has a nose for trouble that's sharper than most, encounters Sosia Camillina in the Forum, he senses immediately all is not right with the pretty girl. She confesses to him that she is fleeing for her life, and Falco makes the rash decision to rescue her—a decision he will come to regret. For Sosia bears a heavy burden: as heavy as a pile of stolen Imperial ingots, in fact. Matters just get more complicated when Falco meets Helena Justina, a Senator's daughter who is connected to the very same traitors he has sworn to expose. Soon Falco finds himself swept from the perilous back alleys of Ancient Rome to the silver mines of distant Britain—and up against a cabal of traitors with blood on their hands and no compunction whatsoever to do away with a snooping plebe like Falco."

The first Flaco book offers a trove of history about Roman times, but the mystery part –the murder of a young woman and theft of silver- is not particularly gripping or even interesting. Being the first in a long running series, The Silver Pigs would’ve stopped me from reading any further back in 1989 when the book was released. However, sometimes these books don’t come out fully formed and I would be willing to give Lindsey Davis the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I should’ve started somewhere else?

I mean, she gives Falco a glib tongue, which generally works in most detective series. But I found Davis concentrating too much on historical aspects that, while far from dull, do slow down her narrative. And I also realize that Davis reconfigured her original idea of a novel about Vespasian –the Roman emperor from 69–79, the fourth, and last, in the Year of the Four Emperors- and his lover Antonia Caenis into a historical whodunnit because she could not find a publisher for her original idea, but at times those two genres seemed to battle for control. I wanted a mystery, I got a history lesson.

I’ve acquired two other Lindsey Davis books, which I’ll try to get to in 2020.

Books: Jimmy the Kid By Donald E. Westlake (1974)

 

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.