Smoke - Hardcover

Westlake, Donald E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892965347 ISBN 13: 9780892965342

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1995

Synopsis

The Mystery Writers of America's 1993 Grand Master offers an off-the-wall, delightfully funny mystery about the tobacco industry's attempt to catch a particularly elusive spy before he goes up in smoke. National ad/promo. Tour.

About this title

About the Author:

DONALD E. WESTLAKE has written numerous novels over the past thirty-five years under his own name and pseudonyms, including Richard Stark. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter, which became the brilliant film noir Point Blank, and the 1999 smash hit Payback. He penned the Hollywood scripts for The Stepfather and The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay. The winner of three Edgar awards and a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, Donald E. Westlake was presented with The Eye, the Private Eye Writers of America's Lifetime Achievement Award, at the Shamus Awards. He lives with his wife, Abby Adams, in rural New York State.

From Booklist:

Writing is well known as a lonely business whose practitioners are miserable, but Donald Westlake's comic crime novels provoke unbidden images of the author chuckling to himself at the word processor. His latest is full of chuckles for readers: when amiable professional thief Freddie Urban Noon breaks into a posh Manhattan brownstone that houses a research institute, he is captured by two lunatic MDs engaged in research for the tobacco industry. They take his medical history at gunpoint. They also give him a drug that renders him invisible. Freddie uses his invisibility to escape the doctors and to make big scores in diamond and fur heists, but he soon discovers that being invisible is straining his relationship with Peg, his charming significant other. Meanwhile, a hilariously malevolent tobacco tycoon hatches a plan to subvert the Human Genome Project for the good of the tobacco industry. He needs Freddie to implement his plot to "make people safe for tobacco" and employs a chillingly unhilarious rogue cop to find the invisible man. Smoke is deft entertainment, and this reviewer hopes the author is chuckling to himself as he produces the next one. Thomas Gaughan

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0892965347
• ISBN 13: 9780892965342
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 454