Wally asked, “Well, when do we do it? Do you want to wait for the rain to stop?”
“Yes,” Tiny said.
“Well, I don’t know,” Doug said. “Depends on how long that is. You know, the engineers in the dam put a little boat in the water every once in a while, run around the reservoir, take samples and so on, and if they run over our line they’d cut it. Even if they didn’t foul their propeller, even if they didn’t find it, we’d lose the line.”
Tiny said, “They won’t do one of their jaunts in this weather, count on it.”
“That’s true,” Doug agreed.
May cleared her throat and said, “It seems to me, John would point out right here that the instant the rain stops the people in the dam might go out in their boat so they can get caught up with their schedule.”
“That’s also true,” Doug agreed.
Wally said, “Miss May, what else would John point out?”
“I don’t know,” May said. “He isn’t here.”
Everybody thought about that. Stan said, “What it is, when John’s around, you don’t mind coming up with ideas, because he’ll tell you if they’re any good or not.”
“Dortmunder,” Tiny said, ponderously thoughtful, “is what you call your focal point.”
With his patented bloodless lipless cackle, Tom said, “Pity he tossed in the hand just before the payout.”
All spring now we’ve been with her on a barge lent by a friend.
Three dives a day in hard hat suit and twice I’ve had the bends.
Thank God it’s only sixty feet and the currents here are slow
Or I’d never have the strength to go below.But we’ve patched her rents and stopped her vents, dogged hatch and
porthole down.
Put cables to her ‘fore and aft and girded her around.
Tomorrow noon we hit the air and then take up the strain.
And make the Mary Ellen Carter Rise Again!RISE AGAIN! RISE AGAIN!
That her name not be lost to the knowledge of men!
All those who loved her best and were with her ’til the end,
Will make the Mary Ellen Carter Rise Again!Stan Rogers
I don’t consider this one of the very best Dortmunder novels, you might be surprised to hear, given the amount of time I’ve spent on it. I think it was well worth the time, but I look at The Hot Rock, Bank Shot, Jimmy the Kid, Good Behavior, and a few of the remaining books in the series, and I find them to be better-crafted narratives, with more coherent points to make, and while I like Wally Knurr as a character, he’s sure as hell no J.C. Taylor.
And I suppose I am a mite peeved at Westlake for dangling the magnificent Ms. Taylor in front of us in the last book, referring to her in passing in this one, but refusing to give her even a brief walk-on. He only partly made up for this omission in the next book.
As I was telling someone in the comments section for the Third Down review, this novel is, for want of a better word, ungainly–loose-jointed, as ponderous as Tiny Bulcher making a point. It operates in fits and starts, breaking down, then starting up again, going off in all directions. But as I said, you could make the same statement about The Pickwick Papers. People still like that, and I still like this. A pity, in fact, it wasn’t published as a serial–it has that kind of feel to it. It holds together quite well enough as a single volume. But I’ve rather enjoyed taking it apart section by section, to analyze what I suspect is just a small sampling of its moving parts.
And if it has many disparate points to make, instead of just one, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make them well, or that its variant themes don’t ultimately blend harmoniously together. Uniformity of execution was never something Westlake strived for in his series. He aspired to make each book different from the one before it.
The central theme, as always, is identity. But with such a large cast of characters, and so much room to run, Westlake is free to come at it from many different angles. The dark mystery of Tom Jimson. The amateur turning pro saga of Doug Berry. The coming of age of Myrtle Street (and the belated realizations of her mother, Edna, that she’s made serious mistakes as a parent). The social awakening of Wally Knurr. The psychic unraveling of poor befuddled Bob.
And our beloved gang faced with a terrible new foe–the small rural town environment, in all its bucolic splendor. Eating away at their sense of self, trying to reshape them into compatible components of a radically different social order. Trying, in fact, to make them into solid citizens. If they didn’t have the reservoir job to anchor them, and they couldn’t get back where they belong, it might eventually succeed.
And Dortmunder–the focal point–turning his back on what he was born to do. Sure, he’s not going straight, but he took on this job, and twice he’s walked away from it, only to be sucked back in. Three times he’s nearly drowned in that accursed lake, and as the Fourth Down begins, he says he’s really out this time. “Game called on account of wet” is his final word. Or so he thinks.
The gang accepts his decision graciously, and Kelp, agreeing with Dortmunder that the Vilburgtown Reservoir is out to get him, steals him a car–a Buick Pompous 88. No mention of whether it has MD plates. Dortmunder drives back to New York, and he should be relieved it’s all over. He doesn’t have to ever see that reservoir again. The money has been located, they can get it without him, right? Tom will try to take it all, but Tiny’s there, Kelp is there, Murch is there, Murch’s Mom is there–not even Tom Jimson is that tough, right? May will be fine. But most importantly, he doesn’t ever have to see that reservoir again. And of course he’s violating his nature by giving up this way. And people who violate their natures have bad dreams. That sometimes turn out not to be dreams at all.
It was during a somewhat shallower stretch that Dortmunder was slightly disturbed by the scratchings and plinkings of someone picking the lock on the apartment door, opening it, creeping in (those old floors creak, no matter what you do) and closing the door with that telltale little snick. Dortmunder almost came all the way to the surface of consciousness at that instant, but instead, his brain decided the noises were just Tom returning from one of his late-night filling-the-pockets forays, and so the tiny sounds from the hallway were converted in his dream factory into the shushings and plunkings of wavelets, and in that dream Tom was a giant fish with teeth, from whom Dortmunder swam and swam and swam, never quite escaping.
The intruder, of course, is Guffey, from the ghost town of Cronley, Oklahoma, who we last saw when Tom broke a very smelly wine bottle full of money over his head in that godforsaken little burg, and just left him there. And he shouldn’t have done that. Left him there. Alive. Easy man to underestimate, Mr. Guffey.
We get a short chapter detailing rather plausibly how Guffey tracked Dortmunder down and made his way east, and now he’s got a rifle pointed at Dortmunder’s head, and he’s making it very clear–he wants Tim Jepson (as he insists on calling Tom Jimson). Dortmunder helps him, or Dortmunder dies.
And meanwhile back at the bungalow in Dudson Center, Myrtle Street, no longer content to peep at the gang through binoculars while speculating on what they’re up to and who the boss is (there isn’t one, Myrtle), comes creeping up to the house, and is immediately apprehended by Tiny Bulcher, which would be enough to scare anyone, but then she sees Doug looking out through the window, and he looks scared, and now she’s bloody terrified.
So this is where Doug’s young Lochnivar side comes out, right? He’s the Nephew in this story, and the Nephew will do anything for The Girl. Except here’s the thing. He’s not a Nephew. And Myrtle isn’t The Girl. Not for him, anyway. All he cares about, seeing a woman he was professing tender feelings for just recently being on the edge of getting killed, is not getting mixed up in a murder.
Fortunately, the only one advocating that Myrtle be disposed of is (you guessed!) Tom Jimson–Myrtle’s father–not that Myrtle is dumb enough to bring this up with him. If anything, that might make matters worse. Leave him in the dark about her being the fruit of his loins and all. You just do not want to know how he’d react to that.
And the true Nephew of the piece springs to the fore-Wally Knurr. He, the Hero, has waited his moment, as his computer instructed, and here it is–he says they can just lock her in the attic until they’re ready to escape–she doesn’t know enough about any of them to help the authorities–she doesn’t even know what they’re doing there. Tom objects that she can yell out the window. Wally shrugs and points out that in this rain, nobody will hear her, or care if they do. At this point, Myrtle concludes Wally must be the ringleader. Nancy Drew she ain’t.
And back at the apartment, Dortmunder and Guffey are waiting for Tom to come back. Dortmunder showed Guffey some handcuffs he’s got (trying to remember if they figured in an earlier book) that would guarantee his good behavior, and Guffey’s not really a killer, just because he wants to kill Tom Jimson (I mean, who wouldn’t?).
Guffey had mentioned something about shooting parts of Dortmunder off until he told him where Tim Jepson was, but he’s decided he just has to sit tight and wait. And as he waits there, and they watch TV (Fantastic Voyage), and they drink beer, and eat pizza, and try to figure out what Guffey’s first name used to be, they kindasorta become friends. Well, friendly acquaintances. Dortmunder has this effect on people.
Guffey even takes the handcuffs off him, so he can go to the bathroom. Then Guffey goes to the bathroom. Without the rifle. By the time he comes back, the hostage situation has just sort of petered out, and Dortmunder is telling him any enemy of Tom’s is a friend of his, and they finish watching microscopic Raquel Welch save the President’s life or whatever that movie was about, and head back to Dudson Center, because what the hell.
Guffey rested a scrawny fist on the kitchen table. “That man ruint my life,” he said. “And I mean that, Dortmunder. I was just a young fella when he got his hooks into me, and he ruint my entire life. My destiny is to catch up with that son of a bitch, or why would you and him come all the way out to Cronley, Oklahoma? What happens after I catch up is between him and me, but I got to have him in my sights one time before I die.”
“I guess I can understand that,” Dortmunder said. “So this is what I offer. You give me your solemn word you won’t make a move on Tom until this other business is over with, and you can come along with me upstate.”
“Where to?”
“But you have to swear you won’t do anything till I say it’s okay.”
Guffey thought about that. “What if I won’t swear?”
“Then I go out to the living room and I get your rifle,” Dortmunder told him, “and bring it back in here, and wrap it around your neck, and go upstate by myself.”
Guffey thought about that. “What if I swear, only I’m lying?”
“I got a lot of friends up there where I’m going, Guffey,” Dortmunder said. “And all you got up there’s one enemy.”
While all this was going on, Doug has persuaded the gang that they need a real boat this time–something that won’t sink in the rain, and that they can use to winch up the coffin with the money in it. Tom refuses to even consider going after any more stashes to pay for it (in this one instance, I’m on his side), and so very reluctantly, Doug becomes party to a felony crime–he happens to know this guy with a boat dealership on Long Island who screwed him in a deal once. They get a real nice boat, a 20 foot Benjamin inboard cabin cruiser. There does not seem to be any such boat maker as Benjamin. There’s a Gannon & Benjamin, but they make wooden sailing vessels. No, I don’t know why Westlake made that name up. If it’s a joke, I don’t get it.
Doug’s not comfortable with crime, doesn’t consider himself a criminal, though he’s always been on the shady site. But he’s committing serious crimes. He’s also been seducing a nice young girl, making her fall in love with him, then he turns around and acts like she doesn’t matter a damn to him, which she doesn’t. He doesn’t seem to know who he is, where he belongs. He’s changing his identity without really stopping to consider the implications. You have to figure something bad’s gonna happen to him. That’s how it always plays out in a Westlake novel, right?
So the reservoir gang goes out one last time to get that money, and everybody, even Wally’s computer, knows Tom is going to pull a cross once they have the money. Wally talks this over with May and Murch’s Mom, back at the house. He says if Tom manages to kill the other string members and take the money for himself, his first move will be to come right back to the house and tie up loose ends. Meaning them. And most importantly to Wally, meaning Myrtle.
He suggests they all move over to Myrtle’s house, where they can keep watch on the bungalow from a safe distance. Now that’s a guy who knows who he is–I’m sure his virtue shall be rewarded in the end, and the princess will fall swooning into his arms. Yeah, that’s what Luke Skywalker thought too, before Lucas sib-zoned him. Storytellers can be real bastards sometimes.
So of course when Dortmunder and Guffey arrive at the bungalow, they find it empty. Dortmunder can’t believe he’s doing this, but he decides there’s nothing for it but to go back to that damn reservoir, and give it one last chance to drown him.
So they find the gang just before they push off in the cabin cruiser (fittingly named the Over My Head), and Tiny knocks Guffey out with a sap before recognizing Dortmunder. Dortmunder says Guffey is a hitchhiker he picked up in the rain. It says something for the gang’s assessment of Dortmunder’s judgment in matters other than heist planning that they accept this.
They lock Guffey in the cabin, and set off. Tom, of course, doesn’t recognize Guffey. See, the problem with seeing humanity as one indistinguishable unimportant mass, Mr. Jimson, is that sometimes it pays to notice things like this one guy who’s spent his whole life waiting to kill you. But Tom is, in all fairness, distracted by more important matters. He’s got to kill five guys, none of them pushovers, though Doug won’t be too hard. One of them is Tiny Bulcher. He needs a little something extra in the arsenal. And he’s got it.
The Ingram Model 10. More popularly known today in both white militia and gangsta rap circles (how guns bring us all together!) as the Mac 10. Thirty 45 caliber rounds. Easily concealed, quiet, accurate. So ten rounds for Tiny, and five each for the other four. That’s what Tom is probably figuring. I’m figuring more like twenty rounds for Tiny, but that’s still plenty left for the others. He can just smother that hitchhiker with a pillow or something. See, this may be a Dortmunder novel to us, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s a Tom Jimson novel, and they all end the same way.
The thing was, Dortmunder and his pals would expect Tom to make a move. Everybody always did, that was written into the equation. Tom’s job was to figure out the earliest point at which they’d expect something from him, and the earliest point before that when he could usefully make his move, and then pick the spot between the two.
This time, it seemed to him, they wouldn’t really expect much trouble before they got the loot ashore, but they would probably start being tense and wary once the casket was actually inside the boat. But now that they had a boat with its own winch attached to its own motor, so that Tiny was no longer needed to drag the casket out of the reservoir, Tom’s actual first potential moment was much earlier than that.
Not when Doug found the marker rope.
Not when he tied the boat to it.
Not when he untied the marker rope from the monofilament and handed it to someone in the boat.
When the marker rope was attached to the winch: then.
So Doug finds the marker rope. He ties the boat to it. He unties the marker rope from the monofilament and hands it to someone on the boat. Tom, down in the cabin, reaches under the mattress Guffey is unconscious upon, where he’s concealed his Mac–it isn’t there. And all of a sudden, he find himself handcuffed to a wild-eyed maniac, holding his gun. “Now, Tim Jepson! Now!” Followed by the sound of gunfire.
So I guess really it was a Guffey novel all along. Short-lived franchise. Tom wins, of course–even with that gun, Guffey’s no match for him, never was. But they’re still handcuffed together, and Tom, figuring Dortmunder had this planned all along, comes up saying he’ll give Dortmunder the gun in exchange for the key (which Guffey actually has, and Dortmunder isn’t dumb enough to tell Tom that).
Tom’s clearly still hoping to pull the cross somehow, but the main thing is, he’s chained to another human being, and for such a singular soul as himself, that’s a terrifying situation to be in. It’s skewing his judgment, dulling his instincts. So he’s not ready when Guffey comes to, and grapples with him–and they both go over the side.
You ever wonder why sailors all stick together in a pinch? It’s because sailors spend their lives out on large bodies of water that are constantly trying to kill them. They may not always love each other, but they need each other. A boat full of Tom Jimsons is a boat full of dead men. Even Jack London’s superlative Sea Wolf didn’t survive longterm. No atheists in foxholes, no solo players at sea. Or at reservoir, same difference.
So as Guffey, his life’s work achieved, lapses back into unconsciousness, sinking down under the waves, taking his enemy with him, Tom Jimson’s last words turn out to be “Al! The key! For Christ’s sake, the key!” A bit late to bring Him up, wouldn’t you say? And Tom, for literally the last time, Dortmunder’s first name is John.
Unfortunately, it’s not just Tom’s best-laid schemes that have gone agley. Doug lost the rope. Guffey filled the hull of the boat with holes when he was grappling with Tom. They’re going to sink. It’s getting to be a habit.
Doug has gone back under, looking for the rope. While the gang, faced with the very real possibility of both drowning and being caught by the law, makes its way back to terra firm by way of Tiny hauling them in with the monofilment line anchored to the shore. They can’t wait for Doug. And Doug can’t seem to wait to die.
For the first time in his diving life, Doug was being stupid underwater. Greed and panic had combined to make him forget everything he knew. He was down here alone, an incredibly dangerous thing to begin with. He was improperly equipped for the kind of search he’d suddenly started to undertake. And, most stupid of all, he was paying no attention to the passage of time.
He’d had an hour of air when he started.
Reading this the first time, I knew this was where Doug Berry met his final end. And (spoiler alert)–he doesn’t. He just keeps looking for the money, for those train tracks leading to the casket of cash, thinking that it just wouldn’t be fair for him to get so close and not get it. He refuses to give up. He’s a salvage diver, and he’s getting his salvage. He finds the tracks, but by that time he’s about to black out from oxygen deprivation–only instinct gets him back to the surface alive. And then pure dumb luck takes a hand.
As he tries to hitchhike his way back into town, still wearing his wetsuit, who should pick him up (in a Chevy Chamois) but the pregnant wife of Bob–poor confused Bob, who spent the whole book questioning his lot in life, his place in the universe, his decision to marry a girl he barely knew, growing more and more confused, until his sanity just gave way entirely. Leaving his wife still pregnant and apparently that condition agrees with her, because Doug, very much in the mood for a nice comforting lay, is instantly very attracted to her (more than he ever was to Myrtle)–and she to him. Oh God damn. He’s getting a happy ending, isn’t he?
There is no greater certitude in the world of Dortmunder than this–Life Is Not Fair. And in this specific sense, these books are an exercise in realism. There may be moments of justice in this world, but they are far and few between (looking at you, Roger Ailes). Doug broke nearly all the rules for suvival in the world of a Westlake novel, and he would just be stone cold dead in a Richard Stark novel, but somehow Westlake decided to let him off the hook.
And you could argue he’s earned it–Dortmunder gives up, and this time, so does the rest of the gang–they’re just not meant to get that money, and they don’t have to worry about Tom anymore, and it’s just time they all went back where they belong. Wally never really belonged there, so he’s going to stay in Dudson Center, at Edna and Myrtle’s house, and he’s hoping it somehow leads to more than friendship with Myrtle, and best as I can recall (we see Wally later in the series) it never actually does. Because Life Is Not Fair. But he’s better off than he was before. Life is not totally unfair, either.
So in the final two-page section of the book, entitled Fifth Down?, Dortmunder and May are watching television at home, and it’s this travel show, and they suddenly see Doug Berry, who is the proud new owner of a Caribbean resort hotel, his beautiful wife on his arm, holding ‘little Tiffany,’ Bob’s baby, and Doug just could not possibly be any happier.
Then there was a shot of Doug wind-surfing, grinning like a baboon, huge ocean, huge blue sky, fantastic yellow-white sun. The off-screen announcer said, “Berry himself, a qualified professional dive instructor, leads the snorkel and scuba-diving classes. His emphasis is on active vacation life.”
And now a shot of Doug bursting out of the ocean into close-up, in full scuba gear, pulling off the face mask and mouthpiece, giving that shit-eating grin right at the camera. “Come on down!”
“You’re goddamn right I will!” Dortmunder raged, on his feet, about to jump headfirst into the TV.
And of course he won’t. They don’t even know what island he’s on, nor could they do anything about it if they did. He won. They lost. It’s over. Dortmunder might as well go to Hollywood and tell little Jimmy Harrington, boy director, to cough up Dortmunder’s ransom money or die. It’s just not who he is. Born to lose. Like most of us. Which is why we love him. And why we pray for Doug Berry’s island to be hit by a tsunami. Soon. Please, God, soon. Or if that’s too hard on all the other people there, how about a shark? Huh? Just one little fifteen foot Great White Shark mistaking Doug Berry for a seal. Is that too much to ask? Okay, then how about a Bull Shark? Since Doug is full of–oh never mind.
So that’s Drowned Hopes, and I honestly think this was a transitional work for Westlake (he had a lot of those). If he could write a comic novel this dark, a Dortmunder story where people actually die violently, something’s happening with him. His early books are very dark indeed, but as the 60’s waned, and the 70’s took hold, he tended more towards the lighter side of things–not light-weight, by any means. But more optimistic, more upbeat, more inclined to look for the good in people, without ignoring the evil.
But thing is, evil is an interesting subject. Tom Jimson was an interesting character. And as I said last time, partly derived from Westlake himself. From the misanthrope that lurked inside of him, casting a caustic eye on the fatuity of humankind–there’s a moment where he calls Doug ‘Popeye,’ and Doug doesn’t get the joke, is just confused by it. We’re told by the narrator that “Tom had found, in his long life, that an astonishing number of people had just about no sense of humor at all” The narrator and Tom are totally in synch at that moment.
But where they go out of synch is that the narrator, Westlake himself, knows that Tom was wrong–no matter how tough you are, you’re going to need somebody sometime. Like when you’re going down under the water for the last time. It’s tempting, to live your life like you’re the only person in the world who is really real, but it’s not smart. And it’s not really living. Solipsism isn’t a philosophy. It’s a delusion.
Still, there’s something there–something he might do more with, in a different context. Our next book isn’t really his–it’s a sort of Mad Libs for Mystery Authors, conceived by a guy who clearly had too much spare time on his hands, and it’s a lot of fun–Westlake’s contributions most of all. And you ask me, it’s the Tim Jimson in him that wrote those. And then comes a book where Westlake takes his misanthropy to cosmic levels. He wants to see how far he can go with it–and you ask me, he went too far that time. But sometimes you need to find where your limits are, before you can do your best work.
And all of this is leading, inexorably, to what may well be his best book. But perhaps even more importantly, this rediscovery of his darker self is sending out signals, to a long-buried alter ego. You’re needed. Come back.
And what rough beast, his hour approaching fast,
Slouches towards Monequois to be reborn?
PS: I did enjoy finding nautically themed poems and song lyrics to introduce each segment. For the last one, I considered several alternatives, including the Popeye Song, one of the racier versions of Barnacle Bill the Sailor, or maybe something from H.M.S. Pinafore. But nothing seemed quite as right as Stan Rogers’ great salvage chanty, and I’ll end with that–but not Stan Rogers’ version (which you can find yourselves easily enough). No, I think I’ll go with Liam. Still missing him. Three times I saw him and Mr. Makem perform live. And I’ll never see them again. No, Nay, Never. No Never, No More.
The Westlake Review 
“Poor Bob” is almost an obligatory phrase to use in relation to that character, isn’t it? He’s one of that handful of minor characters in Westlake books whose life winds up a little worse at the end thanks to our protagonist, and it wasn’t on purpose, but sometimes bad stuff happens to people, and afterward there’s no way to undo it. (The other example who springs immediately to mind is Gretchen, the sort-of-stepdaughter in A Likely Story, and I know there are more.)
I’d forgotten that Wally made a return appearance. That book’ll be fun to reread when the time comes, though I immediately recall one issue I had with it.
And I’m all primed for the next item on the list. I’ve located my copy in the basement and everything.
Bob was on a bad road, with no map, and his encounters with Dortmunder merely hastened him down that road, I’d say. And I think there’s a lot of Westlake in him as well–another road not taken. Upstate New Yorker, got a girl he didn’t know very well pregnant, into science fiction, imaginative, inclined to philosophize, but lacking the tools to know what to do with those philosophical impulses of his, and he just gets lost in his own head. Very Adios,Scheherazade, and I don’t think Westlake ever wrote a more personal book than that. It’s possible he comes out of his tailspin, but we’ll never know.
And Doug, who is clearly a far more shallow and self-seeking person than Bob–he’ll be fine. He’ll enjoy Bob’s lovely wife, and maybe even be a good father to Bob’s daughter. What’s the moral? Know what you want, and what you’re prepared to do in order to get it. Only is that a moral? Well, not everything can be morals. We are animals, and we live in the world of Darwin. That’s not all there is, but that’s part of it. Then again–Bob did biologically reproduce. So maybe someday his daughter will be looking up at the stars, thinking about her place in the universe, wondering about her origins. It’s a good thing to do–in moderation. I’ll be doing it myself soon. Once I get away from these city lights. And this city humidity.
Benjamin inboard cabin cruiser
The gang is trying to get all those Benjamin’s onboard it. (Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.)
I know that Dortmunder and friends are not killers. In fact, it’s kind of a revelation to see Kelp and Munch put the fear of God into Doug, reminding him that while he might be a little bent, they are full-time criminals and that’s not just a different league, it’s a whole different game. And even that message gets sent without any actual violence.
But still, it’s obvious that there are no endings here in which both Tom and the gang are all still alive. Tom tries to kill them either to keep the money or to shut them up, or both. So the smart thing to do is to take Tom out of the picture. Then they can go for the money or not, at their leisure. Or even sell the job to some other gang (if that’s a thing in Dortmunder’s world the way it is in Parker’s. Hey, maybe sell it to Parker! That would be one hell of a crossover. Like Bertie and Jeeves at Blandings, which PGW never wrote.) I can’t recall anyone even suggesting that.
But the way the rules are set up, the only possible ending for the book is that something or someone else kills Tom, because then our not quite heroes stay only slightly crooked and live to steal another day.
They have to be true to who they are, just as Parker does. Parker can only kill in certain specific circumstances, because Stark is a romantic. Dortmunder & Company can’t kill at all, because they are comic criminals. Westlake can write funny murder stories, but the tone of the proceedings would change. It wouldn’t be Dortmunder anymore.
When we first meet Tiny, he sounds like somebody who has killed or at least inflicted serious bodily harm on a lot of people. In fact, in this very book, we see him telling Tom one of his stories about how he dealt with somebody who offended him in some unknown way. Buried alive, sounds like. He’s trying to intimidate Tom, and Tom, of course, is not intimidated. He’s just professionally interested. Because whatever Tiny used to be, he’s part of the Dortmunder gang now. Tom is a gang of one, and he hails from a very different comic universe, where murder is funny. Also humdrum and commomplace. Tiny might as well be trading barbecue tips with him.
But. then again, we never actually see him kill anybody either. Dortmunder is corrupting him too. This is one of several reasons why a Parker/Dortmunder crossover would have been a bad idea.
That took me like ten minutes to type on my iPad.
King of the Minor Quibble here.
$700,000.00, even when the book was published, would not even be a down payment on a “Caribbean Resort.” Yes, having money makes it possible to get more money, but Doug Berry would not be that guy. More to the point of Doug Berry – be a boss, have employees, keep the employees from robbing you blind – he’s not the guy. He COULD show up on a travelogue as a guy who owns a charter sailboat – that would demonstrate that he went back for the money and would be sufficient to enrage Dortmunder. But anything more doesn’t jibe with the character and, as I said, would make for a pretty miraculous 700K.
Like I said, a minor quibble, but they are actually pretty rare for Westlake.
I don’t think we are talking Club Med here. Small hotel, small lesser known island (maybe Anguilla, maybe Ilha Pombo). Westlake knew the Caribbean very well. I assume he could imagine some way for Doug to buy his way in to some down on its luck business, and then charm his way into getting TV coverage for it. And of course the travel program would shoot the resort in such a way as to make it look amazing, and make Dortmunder crazy. “Low white resort hotel”. It’s there in the subtext. But just like Dortmunder, we’re too pissed to see it.
A sailboat just would not be as funny. Anyway, that would be one miraculous sailboat.
Also, Doug might even be luckier with the ponies than Dortmunder. Who isn’t?
There’s a series of PC games called Hotline Miami, where you play a variety of characters (often wearing animal masks) who are tasked with killing shitloads of people in a given level (sometimes they’re Colombian cartel, sometimes they’re enemy soldiers, most of the time they’re Russian Mafiya). The first installment is a relatively short, tightly paced, well designed and incredibly addicting experience with bare hints of a story slowly drip fed to us between levels. It’d be an understatement to say it was a surprise hit upon first release, eventually proving to be a shining example of what an independent game studio could make.
Then came Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number which was…not quite what fans had expected/hoped. The game was a significantly more complicated all around. More characters with different game mechanics, more enemy types, a denser and even harder to figure out story that functions as a sequel/prequel/midquel to the original game, a longer game length, all of which being not nearly as polished as before, this game was a decidedly messier beast than its predecessor. And yet, for all of Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number’s faults, it had just as much to offer as the first game, if not more. It’s not a perfect continuation, but it’s an installment I both appreciate and respect, perhaps even more than what came before.
And so it is with Drowned Hopes, a sprawling, tangent filled, weird, tonal nightmare of a work with arguably the most mean spirited subplot to happen in a Dortmunder to date. It’s not nearly as polished as previous entries, not even close to being as tightly written, and frankly the more objective side of me is tempted to label it an overall failure, less than the sum of its parts. But I can’t do that, because Drowned Hopes admirably swings for the fences in ways previous installments hadn’t dared. It’s not my new favorite, but it might be the Dortmunder I appreciate the most.
So, where to even begin with this? Yeah, this is gonna be my most stream of consciousness post yet. Much like a Jim Thompson novel!
Tom Jimson is my favorite Dortmunder villain, no shock here I assume. There’s a presence to him that’s felt even when he’s off page that I don’t think previous antagonists have matched. And yeah, he actually has a few funny moments every now and then! They’re extremely dark funny moments, but still funny, if only in a cosmic sense. When it comes to casting choices I have two big ideas in mind: Craig T. Nelson or Harrison Ford. They’re both fairly tall, they’re definitely old, they have deep booming voices, and they’re both thin lipped! Nelson was my first pick when I started reading but by the end I was also starting to imagine Ford when reading Tom Jimson scenes.
I think there actually is quite a bit of Jim Thompson influence in him beyond the name and Oklahoma upbringing. The second stash vignette in Cronley for example is pure Thompson, and my favorite section of the entire book. The description of the ghost town and the hotel, along with the heist Jimson pulled was very Thompson esque to me. (Hell, there’s even a pseudo incest moment where Tom pretends to be a sibling to a girl he’s secretly fucking, that’s how you know this is a Thompson homage!) The ending portion of the segment was bone chilling. I personally was left wondering whether Tom simply knocked Guffey out or if he actually killed him with that bottle break. I think that ambiguity was intentional (until the final act, of course). This isn’t to say your assessment of him also being a subtle reflection of Westlake himself and also a nod to Dan J. Marlowe is inaccurate, of course. But I do think there’s more Thompson in Jimson than you do.
I also think there’s some Parker in him, though not enough for me to call him a satire or veiled deconstruction. I do firmly believe Tom to be his own character, though I wouldn’t rule out him being an opportunity for Westlake to see if he could write as Stark again.
Speaking of Parker, I actually disagree on how he would handle Tom Jimson. He would absolutely have nothing to do with the job himself, but if Tom still insisted on doing the dynamite scheme with other people, I honestly believe Parker would let him do it. He obviously wouldn’t give a damn about the townspeople going belly up and I don’t imagine he’d have much fondness for Tom himself. So yeah, why not let Jimson fuck around and find out? And as for the other heisters going along with Tom? Well, if they’re that dangerously naïve/overconfident to join in on a Tom Jimson heist then Parker would probably believe they deserve whatever happens to them.
You see, I think it very much is morality/humanity speaking that makes John so opposed to Tom’s initial plan, not sanity. If it was only sanity speaking, then Dortmunder would focus purely on the logistics of the plan, and it’d be the first thing he’d mention. But no, instead the first thing John objects to (the main thing even) is all of the civilians that would be killed in the crossfire. Sure, it likely wouldn’t work out, but that’s only suitable motivation for why John wouldn’t want to participate in the job himself. If Dortmunder just said “Nope, good luck with that” and peaced all the way back to New York, that’d be the end of the problem on his end. But instead, he not only objects to the plan but he tries to come up with a less lethal alternative. And I think that comes from at least some sort of moral compass Dortmunder has.
Of course, John eventually tries to give up on the town and let Tom do his thing (and I have some narrative problems with that plot point) but even then, he’s roped rather easily back into the reservoir and I’d also argue that him giving up at first was a result of Tom subtly corrupting him and the others.
Speaking of, I think Tom’s influence slightly corrupted Kelp in this installment. Andy’s significantly more threatening and vicious here than in previous entries. Like the first stash grab at the church where Tom threatens to seriously harm a preacher and Kelp just goes: “That’s harsh but fair”. Or take into account how he initially treats Doug while they’re all at Wally Knurr’s place. Yeah, he’s probably just bluffing both times but it’s still jarring to lovably goofy Andy Kelp seriously threaten bodily harm to someone.
Speaking of Wally Knurr, I really liked him for the most part! I was pleased to see him treated pretty fairly as a character. There’s obviously a couple jokes at his expense, but he has genuine insight that helps Dortmunder and co. with the job, and Westlake shows that he’s a legitimately worthy member of the team, even if it’s not a terribly good fit for him. I personally didn’t see him being that much bothered by Myrtle’s lack of romantic interest in him, nor that he was that bothered by being a virgin. Sure he goes on about her being the princess that he has to rescue but comes off more as a consequence of him still having text adventures on the brain as opposed to any entitlement he feels towards Myrtle. Hell, there’s a passage where he recalls the lunch they had together and he doesn’t appear too choked up about her not being into him. I really liked that about Wally.
There were two things about Wally’s arc that bugged me:
1. Westlake uses the rather tired gag of “Nerd experiences real life and tries to comprehend it via insert entertainment medium here”. This isn’t the only story to use that bit and it’s a pet peeve of mine. Like, us nerds are not awed by this weird reality called “life” where you can’t use cheats or reload your save file. We’re usually either indifferent to, outright bored of, or flat out miserable in real life which is why we turn to the realm of stories and entertainment. It’s a minor thing but that gag is really overused and it’s just not that funny to compensate.
2. The main arc of Wally seems to be that he’s a shut in who needs to be more social in his life and stop using that computer of his so damn much. The funny thing is, Wally’s arguably the most well adjusted of the Dortmunder gang. He lives on his own, he has a stable enough income to support himself, he has a car and a driver’s license, he’s able to evade dangerous people with a clever enough alarm system he created for his aparmtent, and he even makes and sells (!!) text adventures of his own as a side hobby. Like, by all accounts, Wally’s practically living the dream compared to most people in real life, let alone other characters in this book! Sure he’s not a social butterfly but the book itself points out that he was an outcast anyway due to his appearance. The computer didn’t ruin his social life because he barely had one to begin with.
Ah well, the character is still pretty damn good and I enjoyed him overall.
The tonal whiplash in Drowned Hopes is off the fucking charts. The most notable example of this for me is the difference between Stash Vignette #2 and Stash Vignette #3. #2 is a tense as hell trek through an abandoned hotel with an old hermit driven by revenge, and #3 is grabbing cash out of Mount Fucking Rushmore. What the fuck?! And that’s far from the only example. The wild thing is, I’m torn on whether this is poor balance, or subtle brilliance. On the one hand, it feels like two books of vastly different tones are at war with each other. On the other hand, that’s because there are two books at war with each other! One is a Westlake comic caper, and the other is a Jim Thompson noir (or a Dan J. Marlowe thriller if you prefer). Either way, I’m halfway convinced the out of control tonal issues are completely intentional. And I kinda dig that! And it also makes for a difficult to get invested in for the average reader.
I didn’t care for Bob’s subplot. It was offputtingly mean spirited for a Dortmunder book. Obviously, bad things happened to characters who didn’t quite deserve them in these books, but to have it this one sided was just too much. And honestly, it’d be one thing if Bob’s turmoil devolved into Kafka levels of absurd tragedy…but instead it’s too grounded to be funny.
As I mentioned before, I think there’s a narrative issue with Dortmunder essentially giving up after the first down and pretty much being forced to come back for the next two attempts. Going from the plot synopsis I read, I expected the book to be about John trying increasingly desperate plans to get the money nonlethally with Tom Jimson’s increasing impatience being a sort of ticking clock. That’s not the book we’re given, as everyone here can see.
Now, from a character perspective, this makes perfect sense. I totally buy that John would give up after the first dismal failure. The problem however, is that now there’s no tension. I don’t feel invested in the town being saved from Tom Jimson, because Dortmunder doesn’t feel invested. He’s dragged back into this job kicking and screaming and it’s evident he no longer cares about the main threat. If the main character doesn’t care about the threat, then why should I, the reader?
Westlake tries to rectify this with May and Murch’s Mom moving into the town and refusing to leave until the job is done, one way or another. But it doesn’t quite work because Dortmunder still feels checked out during the plot. He’s doing this out of obligation, which, okay yeah, that’s pretty much true of all Dortmunder books (The Hot Rock especially), but at least before there was still some level of investment in Dortmunder. And also, the stake here doesn’t feel as dire because May and Ms. Murch could really leave at any time. I felt Good Behavior handled this kind of dilemma better, with Dortmunder reluctantly doing a good deed mostly to appease May but he’s at least still invested in entering the building because he wants to rob all the other stores in there. I dunno, it just didn’t click with me.
That being said, the biggest praise I can give Drowned Hopes is: Fuck me if I knew where any of it was going! This may be the most unpredictable Dortmunder so far, with so many twists and turns that I flat out didn’t see coming. Even if I didn’t like the execution of some of these developments, I still give Westlake points for going there. I didn’t expected Dortmunder to give up so easily, I didn’t expect Myrtle to be Jimson’s daughter, I didn’t expect Guffey to survive Jimson bottling him, I didn’t expect him to sort of team up with Dortmunder, I didn’t expect May to keep Dortmunder on the job by moving into the actual town so he can’t just let Tom drown it, I didn’t expect Doug to live, this story is wild and I’m all for stories that manage to keep me on my toes.
And that’s truly the heart of the matter when it comes to Drowned Hopes. There’s so many things about this book that really bug me, lots of issues from small to significant. But I can’t help but appreciate and respect for doing something different. Whatever else you can say about it (and I’m sure I’ve forgotten to mention some things I wanted to say), this book swings for the fences and I’ll always value imperfect but ambitious, every time.
Good thing I already had my morning coffee.
I think I said in my review that this is like one of Dickens’ longer serialized efforts–The Pickwick Papers, let’s say. Does that have a plot? Not really. Did anyone care? Not a bit. Because they were reading it as a series of vignettes, and enjoying the hell out of each one. It’s far more about all the people Pickwick encounters along the way than it is about the destination, or indeed, Pickwick himself.
And Westlake likes writing that way sometimes. He has so many more ideas than he can ever use to build a single coherent narrative. And sometimes he uses Dortmunder (and certain other characters) as a sort of clearing house for those ideas that didn’t quite rate their own books.
As a result, we learn a great deal more about him and his many interests than we would from a bunch of small nigh-perfect novels. This is part of who he is, and if there’s a better reason for reading fiction by one author than to find out who that author is as a person, what makes him/her tick, I’ve yet to find it. That’s why they all write, you know (the ones who aren’t hacks). To find out who they are, and share it with the world, before the brief moment of light that is consciousness gets snuffed out like a candle flame.
I disagree passionately with parts of your review, but it told me vital things about you, which is why I admire it so much. That’s good criticism–the critic, like the fiction author, should have moments of self-revelation, so the reader of both book and review can fairly assess the opinions being given, correct for them if need be.
So on to the fun part, which is listing all the things you say I disagree with. (Takes much less time than listing all the things you got right).
1)Yes, Parker would not care about the town getting drowned. But he’d care about being caught up in what followed. Why does he go to such pains to avoid killing ‘civilians’ during his jobs? Because that makes the law really interested. You read The Score, so you should know it. He’s horrified by what Edgars did. Not because he cares about the murders, or the town getting destroyed, but because the sloppiness, the emotion of it, is unprofessional, pointless. And will make his life a lot more complicated. If he’d known in advance, he’d have known Edgars would not give up if he refused to work with him. And he might end up connected to Edgars. Therefore, bang. One bullet solves the problem forever. That’s why Edgars can’t tell Parker what he plans, even though there’d still be a really good haul, with some unfortunate repercussions. Because then the book would end much too soon. (Though the entirety of The Score would be just one small part of Drowned Hopes. )
Tom is a mad wolf, a more developed and proletarian take on the much earlier Leon Ten Eyck, in The Spy in the Ointment, and Westlake goes out of his way to tell us that with a place name in this book. If he reminds us of Parker in some ways, that’s because he comes from the same part of Westlake that wrote the Starks–but he lacks professionalism. Parker, say what you will, always gives you your fair split of the take. Nor does he make murder the answer to everything. Lupine tendencies notwithstanding, Tom is a man, but he’s an utterly alienated man. He sees people the way people see bugs. And some of that is in Westlake himself, and as I said, he writes about people like this precisely to study that part of himself, make sure it doesn’t get out of control. But yes, this is Stark resurfacing, briefly, from the stygian depths of the reservoir, and we’re not that far from his full reemergence. This ain’t it, though.
2)Maybe I didn’t sufficiently emphasize the influence of Jim Thompson on this book, but I didn’t feel it was necessary, given the name of the primary antagonist–everybody who cared already knew, and I like to deal with the things nobody else noticed. This has the feel of a Thompson, sure–but not the sensibility. Thompson is, at heart, a defeatist. Westlake isn’t. (It bugs me I still haven’t read any Jay Cronley, so as to know why Westlake name checked him here–I’ll be amending that deficit soon enough–did you see how I actually purchased and a copy of Dark Hazard, just to understand why Westlake mentioned it? I do stuff like that all the time, writing this blog.) Same goes for when Westlake later rewrites Patricia Highsmith’s most famous novel (though hardly her best). You see how he’s reacting to her, but he’s going his own way with it, as she would have done had she read some of his stuff, which I often think she did.
My cohort Ray Garraty and I recently had an overly long email debate (that I started) about what is and isn’t Noir. Ultimately, Noir is mostly about defeat, best-laid schemes gone aglae. We’re doomed because we were born (there’s a reason the existential French are so good at this form). Westlake appreciates the Noir mystique, dabbles in it, makes use of it–but never fully commits to it. We’re not doomed to anything but death, and if everything ever born is going to die, that’s fair enough. It’s what we do between birth and death that matters. Whether we know ourselves well enough to make use of our varying potentials.
Death isn’t defeat. Defeat is giving up, quitting, throwing in the towel–and Dortmunder dies three times in this book. But he keeps coming back. He rallies. That’s what it’s really about. Westlake must have had many such demises in his long professional life, but there he was at the end, writing, to the last possible moment, writing well, and those books are all still out there, reaching new converts like you. So he won. Death lost. That’s how I score it. A tie game, at worst.
3. What about Bob? How come Westlake doesn’t love that Bob? How come he gets jerked around, and left to rot in some asylum over random shit that isn’t his fault? Because that’s another part of the author he dislikes. The sex-addled kid who married too young (very possibly because of an unplanned pregnancy), the science fiction buff, the confused dreamer, the upstate New Yorker, with no focus, nothing to anchor him. The person he might have become, with a few more wrong turns. You see this theme over and over in his work. Context. If you only read Parker and Dortmunder, you’ll never have enough to figure this guy out. He is large. He contains multitudes. So do we all. But him more than most.
Bob would have been fine, if he’d figured himself out. But because he resigned himself to a life of mediocrity, that he inwardly was not reconciled to, he was ripe for this downfall. If you have an active imagination, best put it to work. Otherwise it will put you to work. Life isn’t fair unless we make it fair. How we do that is up to us. We don’t all lose, but many of us do, and they deserve to have their stories told as well. Cautionary tales.
4. I doubt Westlake ever played a video game more complicated than Pac Man in his life. Let alone an interactive one. He wasn’t part of that world, but recognized part of his own nerdy self in it, saw where it might lead, the good and bad of it (and there’s plenty of bad there, let’s be honest). So he gave it his full and honest consideration, and of course that’s the part you’d net-pick (I’m thinking Westlake would not have liked that word), because as he well knew from his reader mail, it’s the readers who know the most about a given subject in your book that will have the most critiques. (And worst of all are the gun nuts reading crime novels).
You know far more than him about this world, and you still see Wally is far more character than caricature. There’s real compassion here, and admiration, for Wally’s cunning and more importantly, his compassion. You’re dead right to say he doesn’t objectivize Myrtle, turn her into some cheap sexual fantasy. He’s a knight errant, practicing courtly love. Much as he might prefer to be practicing the other kind. He’ll take what he can get. He’s the anti-type to Billy Lebatard, in The Rare Coin Score, who could not care less what Claire wants. And Wally would never betray a fellow computer enthusiast for money. Or at all. Parker would have no cause to lecture him. Or kill him.
Dortmunder sees the failings, but he also perceives powerful strengths, and he tells Wally there’s more to life than computers, that he might achieve more if he got out more. That’s good advice. Always.
To say he didn’t get every little thing right–if you wrote about somebody from a subculture you didn’t know at all, would you do this well? I wouldn’t. I would say it’s possible Wally was originally intended as a mere send-up of the Nerd Herd (there are some characters like this in the Dortmunders), but as always happens with a truly great writer (as happened with Tolstoy and his Anna), the character spoke to him, corrected him, nudged him in the right direction. Wally is part of the gang now, and you will see him in future, since unlike Parker, people just sort of stick to Dortmunder. We can discuss him more later.
5. (just so we have the right number of downs). We don’t really disagree much here, HG. I see all the same things you do, but reacted to them somewhat differently. Why is that? Hmm. Age Set?
I am reasonably sure, given your fascination with online gaming, that I am your senior. Would it sound insufferably snotty if I said “You’ll understand this book better when you’re older?” Yeah, probably. Don’t be in any hurry to get there. Never did understand why growing old is so popular. Trending like hell. Everybody does it. Well, they try.
I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to talking about stuff like this. Evidently, it paid off this time.
Don’t really have much to say to your rebuttals…except for one!
While it’s true that Parker would have cared about potential blowback from Johnny Law, well let’s walk this through. In this hypothetical scenario, Tom would approach Parker with the job and his batshit plan, Parker would refuse to take part and Tom would go looking for other volunteers. We both agree so far. Now, say the plan goes ahead and it’s the Titanic level shitshow we all expect it to be. The law would most likely have a waterlogged town with no survivors, three dead heisters at the reservoir, and one living dipshit who thought this was a good idea. So, with all this being said, what would there be to lead back to Parker?
The only thing Tom could do to endanger Parker would be to list out the heisters who declined his offer, which I doubt would be an appealing bargaining chip. And this is assuming Tom would even let them take him in alive. If he wouldn’t, well then Parker would pretty much be home free. He might stay at his lake house with Claire for a small vacation just to be on the safe side but otherwise he’d be perfectly well off.
But other than that, fair enough on the rest of your counter arguments.
I would like to point out something I missed in my first post: There’s a short vignette in, I think, the third down (you think that might be a stealth alcohol joke?), where Dortmunder and Kelp are having a beer at some local joint in Dudson. And we listen on a chat between two regulars that’s perfectly nice, normal, and Jesus Christ it’s no wonder Dortmunder and Kelp wanna leave.
Depends on how it’s set up, naturally. Parker knows Tom already went to prison for a long stretch, meaning he can be taken alive. His reputation (Parker has the connections to find out) is he doesn’t care what happens to those he works with. And he’s old, so the next time he goes away is the last time.
Parker allowed himself to be taken by the law in Breakout–he’s not going to assume Tom will choose death, nor will he assume Tom would never talk to the law, since basically Tom never stops talking (this would be yet another point against him). If Tom knows how to find him, that means he can find Claire, and the house in New Jersey. You want this guy walking around knowing where you live?
Remember when Parker was going to kill Mal Resnick in The Hunter? Just because he had a bad feeling about the guy, and they were working together then, but that feeling was on the money. Parker can often (not always) smell a cross, and Tom is the king of crosses. Can he be sure Tom wouldn’t try to kill him after he turns the job down, just to make sure he didn’t horn in later on, ala Jack French? Just by telling him about the money, Parker potentially gets on Tom’s kill list. A guy this crazy, you can’t be sure. A bullet is sure. I doubt Stark would set it up this way though, because that kills the story.
It would play out vey differently in a Parker. Tom knows he can intimidate Dortmunder and Kelp. He can even intimidate Tiny a bit. He’s going to figure, pretty fast, he can’t put the scare in this guy. So he’d look for some way to use him, take him out later, since Tom has no intention of sharing the take with anyone. So in a Stark novel, he’s still a dead man walking.
Oddly enough–and this is the first and last time it happens–he’s a dead man in this book too, but through a reversal of fortune absolutely nobody was expecting. And the guy can’t even get his name right. Tim Jepson. Bah.
As to your casting picks–Harrison Ford is too handsome. Even now. Craig T. Nelson is too chunky. (At least he’s played villains here and there). You need somebody tall, skinny, and crazy (like a fox, but an insane fox). Somebody who Life has kicked around a lot, and he kicked back. Christopher Lloyd, maybe (in Judge Doom mode). But there are many others. Character actors abound. None of whom were ever matinee idols. Or played superheroes in Pixar films.
I know exactly how I’d like Tom to look, though. This late gentleman named Oleg attended to that, or rather an artist friend of his did. Behold.
Whaddayathink?
You know what, yeah, that’s a fantastic illustration of what Tom Jimson should look like. He drew up a pretty good Wally Knurr, too. I’m a bit mixed on Tiny having hair, I always imagined him being bald or shave headed.
It’s funny you mentioned Christopher Lloyd, I personally think he’d make an excellent Dortmunder. (And yet, when he was actually cast in Why Me? they made him Kelp (at last I’m assuming they did considering most of the names are changed and, if you can believe this, I’m too inclined to watching it any time soon) and gave John to the other Christohper…who honestly looks better suited to playing Kelp. Lulz
Fair enough on your counterargument to my counterargument to your counterargument. I’ll stump you eventually, one of these days. 😉
Oh, here’s yet another thing I forgot to include: One of the other Westlake’s Drowned Hopes reminded me of was Help I Am Being Held Prisoner. Particularly, there’s a scene in the middle where Künt (Keypads can do umlauts now, behold the world of tomorrow!) has successfully foiled the other prisoners from robbing the bank. And we see the ring leader (forgot his name) just stare at that bank with a downright scary sense of determination, as he point blank vows to rob that bank, come hell or highwater. That is the tension I feel was lacking in Drowned Hopes and it’s why, while I haven’t re-read it for years, I’d still consider Help I Am Being Held Prisoner an objectively better book, if not as interesting as Drowned Hopes.
As a single focused first-person narrative, sure. This here is a much longer book than Westlake normally does, and he was always better at the shorter length. But again, he likes doing longer ones sometimes, because there’s so much more space to try things, go down little-trodden byways that may contain some important lessons.
I enjoyed Help I Am Being Held Prisoner more in many respects. But I was fascinated by the wealth of detail in this, by the sense of warped reality (that is to say, real reality) it conveys. Even with the trip into Lincoln’s nasal cavity, this convinced me more than the other one (with its portable plug-in laser just lying around in a McGuffin Box).
And Dortmunder is a better character than Phil Giffin (the name is right there in my review, why do you think I did all this work, sheesh). Dortmunder is a far more advanced study in professional frustration–Phil, who came along a few years later, is just the shadow of Dortmunder, in a novel where he’s allowed to kill, but doesn’t. (I’d have happily read a series of books about the many-faced Eddie Troyn, aka ‘Captain Robinson.’)
So it all depends on what you’re in the mood for, right? A really good hamburger (and not a large one)? Or a five course meal, with all the trimmings, and maybe they didn’t get all the courses just exactly right, but you are full to the brim and learned so much about haute cuisine.
Yes, it’s more interesting, because it’s not the usual thing. You wouldn’t want to read this all the time, anymore than you’d want to have a big fancy dinner all the time. Hamburger works great if you’re in a hurry (I’ll have mine well-done). But the reason the multi-course eclectic banquet works for Westlake here is that he has, sad to say, written pretty nearly all the short well-balanced Dortmunders he’s ever going to write.
Drowned Hopes will remain the longest, but from now on they’re mostly going to be on the long side, full of peripheral subplots, ideas Westlake wanted to try out on us that didn’t fit elsewhere, and we’ll go along for the ride, because Stan Murch is driving, and May’s tuna casserole awaits (would you believe Tiny can cook too?)
Writing should be fun for the writer as well, no? You give this one his lead, because he’s never content to write the same book twice. And rating books isn’t the real point of reading them, anyway. The ratings will change over time. The books endure. These do, anyhow.
If you want to beat me at the game of “What would Parker do?” you need to read all the books over multiple times. And you will. 😉
Not much to add here. Heist Girl mentioned that Kelp seemed to go off character here, which I may or may not agree with having read the full series more than…three times? Maybe more.
Anyway, not just Kelp. Murch seemed considerably more grumpy in this one. Maybe they all did, taking out stress on other characters in response to being cowed by Jimson’s personality. If so, it wasn’t the usual Dortmunder vibe. Distracting, but not a deal breaker.
Anyway, what always bothered me about this one, and it shares this with Who Stole Sassi Manoon, is the asinine take on how computers work. Wally’s “conversations” with his computer are contrived so far beyond silliness it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief, something rarely at issue in Westlake’s writing.
It’s a grumpy book (nobody thinks Dortmunder is out of charcter here–if anything, this is the book that is most perfectly in accord with his overall worldview).
I think you just explained very well why they’re behaving differently, but Kelp is still basically a cheerful friendly guy most of the time. Like when Ken shows up looking for one of the 32 Cadillacs, and Kelp says sure, take it. While Tom says “Kill him.” Ken is baffled by the genial cooperative spirit of these oddball crooks. He feels like Tom is the only one who gets how felons are supposed to behave.
I’m not a computer guy, but the Turing Test, aka The Imitation Game, was first conceived of by Alan Turing in 1950. I don’t think it’s at all out of line to imagine a computer that can, to some extent simulate human conversation, forty years later. Westlake was a science fiction guy before he was a mystery guy, and I’m pretty sure he saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which is set just around a decade after the events of this book.
So? Where’s my moonbase? Where’s my interplanetary space probe? Where’s my homicidal yet conversational supercomputer who can sing Victorian-era ditties about tandem bikes? Where’s my gigantic astral fetus staring down from space? And where the fuck is my jetpack?
The problem with knowing a lot about something is it can really ruin a good story for you. My solution–know less, and enjoy the damn book. 😉
Where’s your gigantic astral fetus staring down from space?
The Air Force just shot it down over Lake Huron.
Couldn’t resist. It will make no sense to your readers a few years from now.
Now please–that was a stratospheric astral fetus. Around 40k feet up. If it was in space, they’d need NASA to shoot it down. Or Space Force. If that actually exists outside our former President’s imagination. It pays to be precise about such things. And since when does anything I write make sense to my readers? I would be inclined to take umbrage. If I knew what that meant. 😐
Yeah, I’m pretty much with Fred on this one. Sure, the computer stuff is…less than accurate, but I went in knewing it likely would be so I was fine with it. Besides, as I know Fred has pointed out before, it’s not like this series was 100% in tune with reality to begin with. There’s always been weird, downright Looney Tunes shenanigans in these books so I personally chalk up the computer to being apart of the heightened cartoony nature of this world.
Speaking of ol’ Wally Knurr, I also just realized something recently that made me rethink my critiques on a certain subplot. Wally isn’t the Anti-Billy from The Rare Coin Score. He’s the Anti-Bob from this book! Both are fairly young men with lives that aren’t the most adventurous or exciting, the love lives of both leave a lot to be desired, and both end up accepting their lives for what they are. But whereas Bob accepts his life more out of resignation and lack of options, Wally is truly content with his life and doesn’t want for much (in many respects, he’s less a dwarf and more a Hobbit, so to speak). Whereas Bob “scored” but ended up married to a woman he tolerates at best, Wally has a platonic but genuinely fulfilling friendship with Myrtle Street (maybe that was also subtle commentary from Westlake). And finally, whereas Bob fled from adventure despite craving it, Wally accepted the call and, most importantly, stuck through it to the end.
Long story short, we stan Wally Knurr in this house.
I’ve seen no direct evidence Westlake read Tolkien, but then again, he seems to have read just about everyone at some point. Wally clearly has physical desires, but has learned how to sublimate them into a rich fantasy life of the mind, and his talents are going to prove highly useful to the Dortmunder Gang in future.
Bob, having successfully employed his reproductive system but failed to develop what is clearly an active mind (overactive, one might even say), is left with basically nothing at all. Again, Westlake musing on who he might have become if he hadn’t learned how to turn his imagination into a career path.
If you ever read the Tobins, you’ll find yet another AlternateWestlake in the third book, and he makes Bob look fortunate by comparison–and then there’s Adios Scheherazade, which is better read than described, though I did try–Lawrence Block considers it one of his old friend’s best, but Lawrence Block doesn’t own a publishing company, so that remains out of print at the present time.
I still think there’s a link between Billy and Wally. (Even the names are redolent of each other). But Wally has what you might call an active talent–Billy is just a collector, which is a fine hobby, and numismatics a worthy field of study, but he’s a rather poor specimen, only interested in adding to his collection, and robbing his fellow enthusiasts. Where does such a proclivity lead one? In this case, trying to add Claire to his collection, because he can’t see the difference between a coin and a person.
Wally is only interested in collecting new experiences, and new friends. He practiced in what we now call the Virtual World–but he didn’t stay there. He broke out. And Westlake admires all escape artists. Escape is what he’s all about.
I’ll now resort to an Ursula K. LeGuin quote I’ve employed elsewhere. “The direction of escape is towards freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”
What indeed?