Sat 8 Aug 2020
DONALD E. WESTLAKE – Nobody’s Perfect. Dortmunder #4. M. Evans & Co., hardcover, 1977. Detective Book Club, hardcover reprint, 3-in-1 edition. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1979. Mysterious Press, paperback, 1989.
I was talking about funny detective fiction a little while back. Standing and looking on from the sidelines, it’s obvious that it’s much easier to write a funny mystery story when you don’t have to work some detective work in to go along with it. Funny crime stories are a lot more common.
Donald Westlake, while he doesn’t have a patent on it, does have a particular genius for this sort of thing. The caper story, that is. He’s written a number of them, and many of them have starred, if that’s the right word, a small-time thief, a crook named Dortmunder. Even his name is funny, but what makes the crimes he and his gang commit so funny is not that they’re so badly planned, for they’re not, but that all of a sudden, beyond a certain point, everything unavoidably goes wrong.
In this book Dortmunder is hired to steal a painting. He’s hired by its owner, who can use the insurance money, but who is naturally reluctant to part with the painting itself. He’d also rather the insurance company didn’t get too suspicious.
Somehow, however, the painting ends up in Scotland, of all places, and to save his very hide, Dortmunder has to commission a forgery, And steal that. Which doesn’t work out either.
Now, all of this may sound as though it would be very easy to write, but a good part of what makes this story funny is Westlake’s way with words, a sardonically understated sort of slapstick, if you will. If Hollywood were to get their hands on it, or from the typewriter of a lesser mortal, you can bet it would end up just· being silly.
Westlake also has a well-developed knack for describing a world and its inhabitants where the life of casual, amoral crime is nothing but another plane of existence. It’s almost funny, for example, to discover how easy it is to steal a typewriter just whenever you need one, but not quite, considering who always ends up paying for such petty pilferage. Sure. You and me. You better believe it.
Rating: B
August 8th, 2020 at 7:27 pm
The trick with this kind of comedy caper is to manage somehow to keep the reader from pausing to think that ultimately the amoral heroes cost him or her money. It dates back to Robin Hood pilfering from the rich and giving to the poor seldom noting the rich just raised taxes on the poor again in a vicious circle.
Westlake manages the trick by creating charming slightly incompetent amoral characters who would be geniuses if anything they ever planned actually worked the way they planned it, and by making the victims of these crimes fully deserving of being robbed.
Of course in his Parker novels Westlake is well aware what that immorality and crime really lead to. It could even be argued that the Parker novels are merely the flip side of the comic capers — everything goes wrong, no one can be trusted, and instead of laughs there is bloodshed.
The art theft version of the comic caper is probably the easiest to get sympathy for other than perhaps jewel theft since few of us are ever going to have to insure a masterpiece and pay a premium. Like those big capers where they take down a casino it is hard for us to see how that hurts ordinary people, though of course that isn’t true.
But it is hard to be that much of a buzz kill not to enjoy a little light hearted larceny in hands as expert as Westlakes.
August 8th, 2020 at 8:28 pm
Fascinating observation, David, but,of course, Robin Hood did not rob from the rich and give to the poor, except for the ‘very’ left wing television series with Richard Greene. Robin Hood protected the monarchy of his king, Richard Plantagneet from the usurper.
Now about that television series. Hannah Weinsten formed Sapphire Productions with money largely, although not totally supplied by the Communist Party of America. The writers, with the exception of George Baaxt who actually went over there, and was one of the few not blacklisted, all supplied scripts under assumed names. Louis Hayward was offered the lead, and obviously did not consider doing it. From an artistic point of view, Richard Greene nailed it.
August 8th, 2020 at 10:54 pm
Robin Hood, like Danny Ocean and Raffles, never existed, certainly not in the time of Richard I and King John, but his reputation certainly did.
Agree about Greene, who also got comfortably rich thanks to the series. It’s fascinating to watch today for people like Nigel Green and Leo McKern who show up in episodes.
August 8th, 2020 at 11:10 pm
Whether Robin Hood existed or not is immaterial, the story has legs, and the principal sources are Walter Scott and Howard Pyle, and a lot closer to reality than Danny Oceans. Now, about Richard Green, he did well, but in his final days was,If not impoverished, stretched for money, and Patricia Medina, his ex wife and her husband Joseph Cotten came to his rescue.