FFB: A Good Story and Thieves' Dozen

Donald Westlake (1933-2008) was not only a prolific novelist, he also penned enough stories to fill seven story collections, some 138 stories in all. Many were included in highly-regarded anthologies, others in magazines like Playboy, The New York Times Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and several sadly defunct 'zines. I thought I'd mention two of his collections, A Good Story and Other Stories (1999); and Thieves' Dozen (2004).

A Good Story is a actually a good representative sampling of Westlake's writing, since it covers 40 years of his career. It includes "Once on a Desert Island," about the fantasy life of a lone marooned bookkeeper, a murder and an imaginary lover; "Sinner or Saint," which finds a con man impersonating a minister hustling a wealthy parishioner for her famous heirloom diamond; "Never Shake a Family Tree" about a woman doing a little geneology by placing an ad in the paper who learns how far rotten apples fall from the family tree; and in "Skeeks," a tabloid journalist must solve a murder for his story on the death of a major television star—who happens to be a dog. The New York Times Book Review noted "Trickery reins: the good, the bad and the obnoxious alike are prey as well as predator. A Good Story earns its title with twists worthy of O. Henry."

Thieves' Dozen features stories with Westlake's comedic professional thief, John Dortmunder, actually 11 Dortmunder stories, not 12, a little bit of additional humor on the author's part. Just as A Good Story makes for a general overview of Westlake's writing in general, Thieves' Dozen is a good introduction to Dortmunder and his capers. In "Horse Laugh," Dortmunder and his gang are in New Jersey, stealing a racehorse, only Dortmunder soon finds himself holding on for dear life to the runaway steed while sirens wail around him; "Now What?" finds Dortmunder riding the New York subway with a ham sandwich in a paper bag—only the sandwich happens to have a $300K brooch inside; a crooked artist named Three Finger Gillie wants Dortmunder to steal his own paintings in "Art and Craft"; and in "Too Many Crooks," the gang tunnels into a bank vault only to find it packed with hostages from an armed robbery already in progress.

Westlake says of his popular literary creation in the Preface, "And I guess Dortmunder remains pecularliarly mine, at whatever length. Originally, he was just passing through. He wasn't expected to have legs, and yet here he is, still domitable but bowed, apprentice, it would appear, of both the extended romp and the quick-hit, the perhahps-not-exactly-surgical strike."