The Hot Rock (Donald Westlake) (1970)
After hearing about how Donald Westlake is the master of the comic crime caper novel, I thought I'd read The Hot Rock since it the first book in his Dortmunder series. Dortmunder and his gang of eccentric accomplices continually have bad luck when they try to steal a valuable emerald. I have to say I was amused by this story, but it was not gut-busting funny. After the amusing opening, some of the humor seemed a little predicable. However, in the last third of the book the story picked up some momentum and was enjoyable. This first Dortmunder book has not made me into a big fan of the Dortmunder series, but it was good enough for me to give another book in the series a read at a later date.

Interestingly, in the short forward of this book it was noted that this story started out as a novel for the "Parker" series that Westlake writes under the name of Richard Stark. Parker is a hard-boiled tough guy that plans crime capers also. The series is not comical like Dortmunder, but it has some dark humor thrown in once in a while. Mel Gibson's Payback movie was based on the Parker novel called The Hunter. I'm reviewing a Parker novel next. Rating: C.
- posted by Brad @ 3/18/2004 12:20:00 AM