MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Donald E. Westlake We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 MEMORY by Donald E. Westlake /2010/memory-by-donald-e-westlake/ /2010/memory-by-donald-e-westlake/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:55:11 +0000 /?p=8491 Book Quote:

“It was almost as though nothing existed until he looked at it, the world had no existence before he saw it. And would it fade again out of existence behind him.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (MAR 29, 2010)

As a long-time fan of Donald Westlake, I was very sad to read of his sudden death from a heart attack on December 31st, 2008. So naturally I was surprised to hear that there was a previously unpublished Westlake due to be released by Hard Case Crime in March 2010. When I learned that this was a book that Westlake wrote in the 60s, well I was intrigued.

Memory has to be one of the bleakest, darkest novels written by Westlake in the course of his long, outstanding career. Interestingly, the violence of Westlake’s Richard Stark/Parker series and the humor of the Dortmunder novels are absent. Instead Westlake’s tale reminds me of the novels of Philip Dick. Memory is a bitter noir tale of one man’s disorienting attempts to connect with the person he used to be, and it leaves behind lingering questions regarding notions of identity.

The tale begins in a hotel room with an unidentified couple:

“After the show, they went back to the hotel room, and to bed, for the seventeenth time in three weeks. He had chosen her because, being on the road with him, she was handy; and additionally because she was married, had already clipped the wings of one male, and could therefore demand nothing more from him than he was willing to give. Why she had chosen him he neither knew nor cared.”

As the couple clench in sweaty, focused sex, the woman’s husband bursts through the door and an ugly scene takes place. The scene is never completed–we don’t know exactly what took place that night. It’s as though the story creates a scene, a window that grants us just a glimpse of what happened; the rest is up to our imagination. The unidentified male involved in the adulterous affair wakes up in hospital. He remembers only a sliver of that evening, and so he has just about as much information as the reader. His body gradually heals in hospital, but he appears to be suffering from amnesia. He’s told that he’s an actor from New York named Paul Cole. He also learns that the acting troupe has moved on without him, and that the local cops are running out him of town.

With just a few dollars in his pocket, Cole doesn’t have the fare to make it to New York, so he takes the bus to a town called Jeffords. With enough change to rent a run-down hotel room for the night, Cole knows he’s in a bad spot. He can’t remember any of the names of his friends, so there’s no one to ask for help. Trapped in an impossible situation, Cole manages to get a menial job at the local tannery. He rents a room at a boarding house, makes a few friends and even dates a local girl. Life is a struggle. He has difficulty remembering things (such as appointments or directions), and he uses notes as prompts to help him survive, but as time passes even the notes and the slivers of memories become meaningless. At one point, he becomes attracted to soap operas hoping to see a familiar face of an actor he perhaps once knew:

”The soap operas were his only contact with his former reality; he watched them as a prisoner in a dungeon watches the clouds crossing the rectangle of sky behind his one high window.”

But getting a new life isn’t enough, and just who he is still nags away at the edges of Cole’s mind. He calculates how much money he will need to return to New York, and while he reasons that his memory doesn’t seem to be getting any worse, it also isn’t getting any better. At the same time, it’s obvious that Cole is suffering from something much worse than amnesia. He thinks that if can just get back to his life in New York, things will begin slipping back into place….

It’s a stroke of brilliance that Westlake created this character as an actor. The book starts with Paul Cole’s mind as a blank slate, and so the reader is at square one–right along with the protagonist. We really have no idea what sort of person Cole was before the accident. But one thing we do know about Paul Cole is that he is or was an actor, and the one thing an actor must have is a good memory. Without the ability to memorize, an actor is forced to become … well, something else.

Ultimately this is a chilling noir tale that explores notions of memory and identity. Are we a sum total of what we remember? Yet we all forget things to one degree or another, and a lifetime of memories crystallize to a few salient moments. Are we also what we forget? Cole loses his memory, but when he finds his life again, it’s as though he missed the train, passed his station or perhaps he just died…. Through Cole, a man who becomes increasingly marginalized and diminished, we see that without our memories, we are really nothing. Memory here is portrayed rather like a suit of clothes, and we wear those memories that provide a perfect fit. Without memory, we don’t really know who we are or what we enjoy. Cole thinks that his problems will be solved when he retrieves his memory, but instead he ends up attaching himself to a bunch of belongings and people, and nothing seems to be him–the person he has become.

I find myself a tad sentimental at this moment–it’s almost as though by leaving this book behind, Westlake remembered all his fans in his will. And on a final note, if you go to the official Westlake website, you will see the following comment: “I believe my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.” Thank you, Donald Westlake and thank you Hard Case Crime.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-5-0from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Leisure Books; Original edition (March 30, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE: Memory
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Donald Westlake
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

The Cutie

Somebody Owes Me Money

Money for Nothing

Put a Lid On It

Books in the Dortmunder series:

Get Real

Watch Your Back

The Road to Ruin

And Westlake writing as Richard Stark:

Dirty Money

Breakout

Bibliography:

Hard Case Crime reprints:

The John Dortmunder Series

]]> /2010/memory-by-donald-e-westlake/feed/ 0 GET REAL by Donald E. Westlake /2009/get-real-by-donald-westlake/ /2009/get-real-by-donald-westlake/#comments Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:08:19 +0000 /?p=2855 Book Quote:

“You’re probably like most guys,” Babe Tuck told them. “You got no idea how lucky you are to be inside an American prison. Except for the rapes, of course. But the rest of it? Heated cells, good clothes, regular food. Not even to talk about the medical care.”

 

“I wish I’d looked at it that way,” Kelp said, “back then.”

 

Book Review:

Reviewed by Guy Savage (JUL 18, 2009)

Years ago I used to watch television. I’d tune in once a week or so to the odd favourite programme, but sometime in the last decade, I found myself becoming really bored with television–its predictable plots, its clichéd dialogue, and the endless peppy adverts designed to loot my wallet. Just when I had decided that television was mind-numbingly stupid, Reality TV arrived, and that’s when I gave up and started using my television set solely to play DVDs. And this brings me to Donald Westlake’s novel Get Real. Realizing the capacity for comedy, several authors have taken the idea of reality television and written some very creative and funny books built on the subject: Ben Elton’s Chart Throb and Dead Famous, for example, and now Westlake tries his hand, and the result is a witty crime caper novel featuring one of Westlake’s regulars, John Dortmunder.

When the novel begins, Dortmunder and his sometime crime buddy Stan are dismayed to discover that Stan’s mother, a New York taxi cab driver has opened her mouth to a passenger about her son’s life of crime. Stan’s mother insists that her fare was a legit Reality TV producer interested in creating a new programme about real crime committed by real criminals, but naturally Dortmunder is suspicious:

“When committing a felony,” Dortmunder pointed out, “the idea is,
you don’t want witnesses. What you want is privacy. And you especially
don’t want the entire television-watching population of America for a
witness.”

Taking the business card left by Doug Fairkeep, Dortmunder decides to check out the reality TV story and he cautiously makes contact. He’s curious but senses a scam–after all, deliberately setting out to record a crime with millions of witnesses goes against the idea of not getting caught.

It seems, however, that Doug Fairkeep is legit and that he does want to film a real heist committed by real criminals. Fairkeep, who’s slick and assured, even has a title for the programme: The Gang’s All Here. And while Fairkeep is delighted with his new concept, it still doesn’t set well with Dortmunder and his pals. “The part I don’t get” Dortmunder said, “is the part where we don’t go to jail.” Assuring Dortmunder that their legal department will handle any snares, Fairkeep offers $20,000 to Dortmunder and each of his associates, plus six hundred a day during the actual filming of the series.

With bait so attractive, Dortmunder agrees and begins to put together a team of men willing to join the venture….

Westlake, who passed away suddenly on December 31, 2008, seems to have had a lot of fun writing this book, and that means it was a lot of fun to read. Westlake creates a slick world in which everyone has a con and everyone is on the make: from a snotty waiter at an overpriced restaurant to Doug Fairkeep–a glib operator whose scams are reduced to fudging expense accounts and misusing his position to bed budding actresses. And what’s so much fun here is that Dortmunder et al–who are the low men on the totem pole of power, set the agenda against the monolithic corporations behind the reality TV show. Refusing to be played as mere brainless entertainment, Dortmunder and his gang have their own scheme, and it’s not long before Fairkeep senses that he’s out of his league. (He’s too much in love with himself to fully grasp that he’s being outmaneuvered.)

Get Real is the fourteenth novel in the Dortmunder series, and it’s a pleasure for fans to see the old gang back in action. The story is fast paced and whipped together with snappy, witty dialogue. Much of the humour is found in the idea that you can’t really plan for reality as reality has a way of writing its own script. The humour works about 90% of the time but hits a sour note once in a while:

“Ah this grandmother of eight had been compelled at last to her true vocation
as love-song lyricist by the flaming car-crash death of her favourite seventeen-year-old granddaughter. Well Grandma, lucky for you she bought it.”

Not funny at all.

But humour is found in the irony of the situation and asking oneself the question: Just who are the biggest crooks here? Dortmunder and his pals or the fat cat corporations who skim and cheat at every opportunity?

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 25 readers
PUBLISHER: Grand Central Publishing (July 17, 2009)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE: Get Real
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Donald Westlake
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More Dortmunder SeriesMore Donald E. Westlake reviews:

The Cutie, Somebody Owes Me Money, Money for Nothing, Put a Lid On It

Read a review of Memory

Another (excellent) reality TV novel:

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst

Bibliography:

Hard Case Crime reprints:

The John Dortmunder Series

]]> /2009/get-real-by-donald-westlake/feed/ 0 THE CUTIE by Donald E. Westlake /2009/the-cutie-by-donald-e-westlake/ /2009/the-cutie-by-donald-e-westlake/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:50:40 +0000 /?p=2153 Book Quote:

“There are four kinds of cops, none of which I like. The first kind is the fanatic, the second kind is the honest-but-reasonable, the third kind is the bought, and the fourth kind is the rented. The fanatic is out to get you no matter what. The honest-but-reasonable is out to get you, but he’ll listen if you’ve got something to say. The bought can be useful, but I hate to have to rely on him, because I never know but what he’ll turn out to be only rented. The rented cop is a bought cop who doesn’t stay bought, and he’s probably the most dangerous kind of all.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Jana L. Perskie (JUN 3, 2009)

Billy-Billy Cantrell is involved in narcotics, as a junkie and as a retailer on New York City’s Lower East Side. Heroin is his thing…Bigtime!. He’s a “meek, nervous, quiet little guy whose only offense is dope.” One evening he shoots up and falls asleep in a doorway. When he wakes up, in a drug induced stupor, he finds himself in the apartment of Mavis St. Paul, who until very recently was a would-be actress and singer. Now, Ms. St. Paul is a fresh corpse. Cantrell is no killer. He doesn’t ever carry a weapon and has no memory of leaving his doorway, let alone making his way to the Upper East Side apartment. As he flees the scene in terror, he sees a police car pull up in front of the St. Paul residence. Someone had called in the crime and set him up. Unfortunately, he left behind his fingerprints and his hat.

Cantrell knocks on George “Clay” Clayton’s door in the early morning hours and tells him he’s been “patsied.” Clay, our narrator, is the “right-hand man and trouble shooter for crime czar Ed Ganolese.” His appearance doesn’t fit his job description, however. He looks more like a respectable insurance salesman than a hit man. But then, the organization he works for is run like a top-notch business enterprise and Clay would fit right in as a junior executive.

Usually, in a situation like this, Ganolese would tell Clay to make Billy-Billy disappear. The addict knows too much about the narcotics business and all the police would have to do to get him talking is put him in a cell and deprive him of a fix. When Clay contacts Ganolese, the boss tells him that Billy-Billy has some powerful friends in the European organization – people he met while soldiering during WII. (The Cutie was published for the first time in 1960 as The Mercenaries). These friends want Cantrell to remain alive and well…or as well as possible, given his line of work and favorite pastime. But the police want to close the case. The victim also has some powerful friends who are pressuring the commissioner to arrest Cantrell and throw away the key. The solution: to find the “cutie” who murdered Ms. St. Paul and set-up Billy-Billy, who must leave town ASAP. Clay is supposed to drive him to a safe house in New England. When the police knock on Clay’s door, Cantrell escapes through the bathroom window. Will Clay be able to find him before the cops do?

As Clay investigates he finds out more and more about Mavis St. Paul, aka Mary Komak, her shady past and long list of lovers. Apparently, she had a most mercenary attitude toward men. When the cutie murders again and then tries to kill Clay, the situation becomes desperate, with the wise guy always just a step ahead of him.

Complicating Clay’s life further is his dancer girlfriend Ella, who loves him but is reasonably ambivalent about his career. Although he is wedded to his work, he thinks about the morality of his lifestyle throughout this very noir crime novel.

The author’s writing is tight and the narrative’s pace is fast. The humor is wry. The ending is a wowser.

This is Donald E. Westlake’s debut novel and, although not my favorite, I really liked the book and found myself riveted on many occasions. To the author’s credit, The Cutie stands up well after 49 years. Mr. Westlake, who recently died, was a three-time Edgar Award winner, one of only two writers to win Edgars in three different categories: 1968, Best Novel, God Save the Mark; 1990, Best Short Story, “Too Many Crooks”; and 1991, Best Motion Picture Screenplay,”The Grifters.” The Mystery Writers of America named Westlake a Grand Master in 1993, the highest honor bestowed by the society. Once again, kudos to Hard Case Crime for paying tribute to the author and publishing this book.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 8 readers
PUBLISHER: Hard Case Crime (February 11, 2009)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AMAZON PAGE: THE CUTIE
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Donald Westlake
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and or Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Dortmunder Series and other Westlake reviews and some books written as Richard Stark

Read a review of Get Real

Read a review of Memory

Bibliography:

Hard Case Crime reprints:

The John Dortmunder Series

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