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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Fickle Finger of Fate Fingers a Felon!, Jul 1 2003
This book will delight anyone who finds the "value-added" features of telephones (such as call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, and answering machines) to be annoying. John Dortmunder does, too, especially after his friend, Andy Kelp, becomes addicted to all of these features. John Dortmunder is your basic everyday, unlucky, but hard-working burglar. In Why Me, he spots a sign on Skoukakis Credit Jewelers in South Ozone Park in Queens that the owner is away on vacation. Noting that the door's alarm box is an easy one to by-pass, he plans a late night return trip. While alarms ring in the distance, he's started when a car pulls up in front, and someone climbs out. He dives behind a display counter just before someone opens the door. The entrant is followed by more men, and they all talk in a foreign language. The safe door is opened and closed. Eventually, they leave. With good fortune, he finds that the safe is also an easy one to handle. Soon, he has it open, and starts removing the contents. He took some diamond bracelets, a few sets of earrings, an assortment of jeweled brooches, and a few rings. He notices a single box with a ring set with a suspiciously large red stone. "Now why would any jeweler pub a fake stone like this in his safe?" He decides to take it along, and let a fence tell him if it's valuable. That turns out to be an enormous mistake. The stone is actually a historically important one, the Byzantine Fire, which has just been stolen by a band of Greeks from its courier who is taking it to be returned to the Turkish government. The rest of the story involves the consequences of this unwitting heist. The heat is really on, and only Andy Kelp and his girl friend May are on Dortmunder's side as he tries to avoid the consequences of being the object of an international manhunt. Dortmunder quickly gives up on the notion of trying to make any money from the gem. After all, every fence in New York is being watched and no one would buy it. He decides to give it back, but the police won't cooperate. They want his head on the wall. Now, how will Dortmunder get out of this one? That's the mystery of this story. In typical fashion for a Dortmunder story, there's enormous humor about the stupidity of life . . . and an ironical twist to almost every situation. As with most stories in the series, there's a scene where barflies mangle words, quotes and ideas in very original and hilarious fashion. This story is about as simple as the Dortmunder stories get, but it is all the more appealing for its intensification of the overhanging problem of how you get out from between a rock and a hard place. After you finish this story, think about some time when you were faced with a seemingly impossible situation. How did you find a solution? How can that solution help you with other difficult situations in the future?
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