Book Review: Watch Your Back!

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

Watch Your Back!     Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Donald E. Westlake
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: John Dortmunder # 13
Mysterious Press; $24.95 hardcover; 310 pages

Obnoxious fence Arnie Albright’s family did an intervention with him and sent him to Club Med for a week with orders to come back a nicer, happier man, or they’d disown him. In that island paradise, Arnie meets billionaire Preston Fareweather, a man even more obnoxious than himself, who’s been hiding out there to avoid the process servers from his ex-wives (5 of them, at last count). Arnie returns to Manhattan with a whole new attitude and a proposition for his associate, John Dortmunder: a can’t-miss multi-million-dollar robbery, of Fareweather’s unoccupied penthouse.

But when Dortmunder and his crew head for the O.J. Bar & Grill to make their plans, they discover that the place they always meet has fallen into the hands of a mob. Suddenly a third-rate Tony Soprano wannabe and a billionaire have something in common: they both have Dortmunder after them—and disaster can’t be far behind.

I’ve been a huge fan of Westlake for years. He’s truly the master of the comic caper novel. Not only that, he has the ability to turn a phrase on a dime: “There seemed to be fewer regulars than usual, huddled together at the left end of the bar, as silent and miserable as kittens in a sack with the bridge getting close.” Talk about capturing a mood!

Dortmunder is Dortmunder, morose and lugubrious. There’s an addition to the crew, in the form of young would-be con artist Judson Blint, barely 18 but already accomplished at padding a resume. If you like your crime with a big dose of laughter, Watch Your Back!

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM

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