What's the Worst That Could Happen? [Large Print] (Hardcover)

Only the house is not vacant and billionaire media baron tycoon Max Fairbanks holds Dortmunder captive at gunpoint until the police arrive. The police ask Fairbanks if anything is stolen and upon seeing a ring on Dortmunder's finger he decides he will turn the tables on his intruder and steal his ring. He claims the ring is his and the cop makes Dortmunder hand it over. Pleased with himself Fairbanks figures, what's the worst that could happen?

Fairbanks is humiliated and enraged. Vengeance and getting the ring back are all that occupies his mind, but Fairbanks is extremely powerful and hard to track down. This is an interesting book. A bit slow in parts but a good basic plot. If you like this and want a sensational Westlake novel read his book The Ax.

As the book opens, Dortmunder is offered $500 to pretend he is someone else at a deposition. He spends a week memorizing his lines, and is ready to go. Then he friend cancels the whole thing. So there's no $500 coming. As usual, such a setback sets Dortmunder in motion to find a new source of "easy" and illegal income.

May, Dortmunder's girl friend, receives a FedEx package, and is puzzled. Unexpectedly, her uncle, Gideon Gilbert Goodwin has died. Her sister, June, has decided to send her Uncle Gideon's "lucky ring." May remembers Uncle Gid as "the one who smelled like horse manure, I think. He was out at the track all the time." The ring was not too thrilling. It was "gold-looking but wasn't gold . . ." and "displayed on its flat surface three thin lines of tiny stones -- chips, really -- . . . that were probably glass." The top line was discontinuous with a blank in the middle. May's annoyed because she sees this as a gambit by June to get May to call her. The ring also doesn't fit her. She asks John to try it on. "You could use a little luck." The ring fits perfectly on the ring finger of his right hand. "So there you are," she said. "Your lucky ring."

Immediately, the phone rings and a friend, Gus, offers him the chance to work on a burglary that night. A billionaire, Max Fairbanks, "is in Chapter Eleven, so the house his corporation owns . . . is under control of the bankruptcy court, so nobody's supposed to go there, so it's empty."

Unfortunately, Max has decided to sneak into the house to entertain Playboy's Miss September, Tracy Kimberly, for one last time before he loses the house. When Gus and Dortmunder break in, Max lifts his head from Tracy's navel, takes a gun from a bedside drawer, and catches Dortmunder in the act. When the police come, Max notices that Dortmunder's "lucky" ring has the same symbol on it as his corporation uses. Max tells the police that the ring belongs to him, and steals it from Dortmunder.

Although the ring has little real value, Dortmunder doesn't want to lose it because it's a gift from May. After one of the most hilarious escapes from the police that you will ever read about, he sets about recovering the ring. In a rare reversal of fortune, Dortmunder always succeeds in pulling off each caper . . . reaping lots of loot in the process, but he cannot recapture that "lucky" ring.

The people who are getting lucky are Dortmunder's friends who help him with the capers. Andy Kelp does best because he even finds a girl friend in the process.

Gradually, Max realizes that it is Dortmunder who is after him, so all the resources that a billionaire in bankruptcy can muster are arrayed against Dortmunder. The final showdown comes in Las Vegas in a hilarious caper that will remind you of many of the great Hollywood movies about knocking off casinos.

By the time you are done, you'll be wondering who and what are really lucky and about what.

Perhaps Dortmunder should realize that his good luck begins and ends with May. After all his previous relationship had been an unfortunate marriage to and divorce from a nightclub entertainer named Honeybun Bazoom in San Diego.

The main problem with the book is that Dortmunder is a lot funnier when he's having more problems. A lot of the tension that creates laughter is lost by having him successfully ripping off Max in New York, Washington and Las Vegas.

After you finish reading this book, think about where you have good luck . . . always!

John is determined to recover his ring and won't rest until he has it. The fact that he's up against a billionaire with virtually unlimited resources isn't enough to alter his resolve. So we follow caper after caper as John and his old friend Andy Kelp make their attempts which occur in New York City, Washington D.C. and then, in a rousing finale, in Las Vegas.

This is the 9th book in the Dortmunder series and is an outstanding story that contains all the humour and characters of the previous books, but is different for one important reason. It looks as though John's luck may have changed, although he won't hear of it. It's the paradox between the luck Dortmunder thinks he is experiencing and the luck he's actually having that provides many of the more amusing moments.

Donald Westlake's John Dortmunder series has provided me with some of the most consistently entertaining reading of any author I have read in recent years. The books are complete farces, yet have been presented with the greatest imagination possible. What's The Worst That Could Happen picks up this precedent and carries it even further. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good laugh.