Don't Ask - Hardcover

Westlake, Donald E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892964693 ISBN 13: 9780892964697

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 1993

Synopsis

Dortmunder has a job offer. He's been hired by third parties to pull off heists in the past, but never to lay his hands on anything this peculiar. Frankly, it's a bone. Not just any bone. A femur. Well, not just any femur, either. A femur which, 800 years ago, was part of a 16-year-old girl who, having been killed and eaten by her own family, was made a saint by the Church. The femur, her only relic, is all that's left. Now two small eastern European countries - Tsergovia and Votskojek - are fighting like dogs over...well, the bone. There's only room for one of them in the United Nations General Assembly, and the choice is in the hands of a powerful Catholic prelate. The country that tosses him the bone is sure to be in like Flynn. Dortmunder's first reaction to the Tsergovian ambassador's offer is to ask for more front money. His second is to round up his gang - light-fingered Kelp, master driver Murch, and man-mountain Tiny Bulcher - and case the Votskojekian mission, a former tramp steamer parked in the East River. The current repository of the bone, it will be the target of a heist carried out by land and sea, with the team displaying the finesse and split-second timing for which they're famous. It should only be that easy. Before the gang can say "Saint Ferghana's knee", they've got a major fiasco on their hands, one that will reach from the snow-capped mountains of Votskojek to a billionaire's art-crammed estate in New Hampshire. But it will show, once and for all, that when it comes to getting revenge, Dortmunder can cut to the bone.

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Reviews

Westlake fans (who should comprise the entire American reading public) will cheer the hilarious return of Manhattan con man John Dortmunder and his friends from their comic misadventures upstate in Drowned Hopes . The caper here turns on the femur of St. Ferghana, a 15th-century relic claimed by rival Eastern European governments in the newly created nations of Tsergovia and Votskojek. Whichever country is awarded ownership of the bone (by a dim archbishop) will gain the one available seat in the U.N. A Tsergovian cousin of Dortmunder's pal Tiny Butcher convinces the nefarious crew, including Stan Murch, Andy Kelp and others, to steal the bone from the Votskojek embassy, currently a boat berthed in the East River. Dortmunder's plan fails at the last minute, leaving the bone under Coast Guard custody on Governor's Island, half the gang in the DEA's hands and Dortmunder in a dungeon watched over by the Frankenstein-like Dr. Zorn. Dortmunder's escape and a few botched rectifying thefts occur before the lugubrious conman conceives an elaborately devious final job that involves impeccably timed crimes in New York City, in Vermont (at the ski chateau of an international hotelier with a $6 million art collection and an eye on the new Eastern European market) and at the Rivers of Blood Cathedral in Votskojek's capital. With laugh-out-loud dialogue, perfectly aimed wit and characters who leap off the page, this latest Dortmunder tale proves again that Westlake is a country unto himself. Don't ask, go visit.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The hapless Dortmunder and his gang (Drowned Hopes, 1990, etc.) are hired to burgle the emerging nation of Votskojek's US embassy, ensconced in a boat on the East River, to redeem a sacred relic--the thighbone of the cannibalized 13th-century saint Ferghana--and bring it to the emerging nation of Tsergovia's embassy, a lower Second Avenue storefront, thus insuring the latter's induction into the UN. Naturally, things quickly go awry: the bone is impounded by the DEA; a mad scientist inoculates Dortmunder; the Votskojek bigwigs stage an elaborate hoax at a Vermont chateau; and a subsidiary Dortmunder caper--to hijack a six-million-dollar art collection--goes belly-up when the cops tow away the van housing the paintings. A twist or two later, the Tsergovians are accepted into the UN--though clearly they'd be more comfortable in a Rudolf Friml operetta. Westlake's compilation of very funny slapstick vignettes--… la a series of Saturday Night Live sketches--can wear a bit thin as a novel, but they're a most effective antidepressant. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Westlake, author of more than 60 novels, including Sacred Monster: A Comedy of Madness ( LJ 5/1/89), adds yet another installment to his popular crime series featuring the dour master criminal John Dortmunder. Dortmunder is contracted by a tiny eastern European nation to steal a sacred relic. At first, the job seems like a cakewalk: "We could phone for it. We could send a kid to pick it up. It's so easy... ," he says. As usual, though, things go wrong: Dortmunder is taken prisoner, and the relic ends up in the hands of the Drug Enforcement Agency. How he escapes his captors and gets the relic back makes for a hilarious romp. Recommended for the mystery collections of most public libraries.
- Mark Annichiarico, "Li brary Journal"
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892964693
• ISBN 13: 9780892964697
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336