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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Old Switcheroo!, Jul 1 2003
Donald E. Westlake does a brilliant job here of using comedy to display the ironies of life in proving that Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong . . . will) is still in effect.John Dortmunder is well known to Westlake fans as the break-in specialist who constantly faces unexpected misfortune to foil his "can't-miss" plans. Never has Dortmunder had so many plans upset as in Bad News. This book is my second favorite in the series, after Bank Shot. The book's opening would make a great short story. Dortmunder is about to walk off with $1,000 worth of camera equipment from a discount store when every alarm and light in the place go off. Using his wits, he quickly improvises an alibi that will leave you chuckling for days. Having lost that $1,000, Dortmunder agrees to Andy Kelp's offer of a job digging up and moving a body from a nearby cemetery. Andy got the job over the Internet, and it turns out that John and Andy are viewed as expendable by their "employers" -- Fitzroy Guilderpost and Irwin Gabel. In the process of protecting themselves, John and Andy decide that they should try to cut themselves in on whatever the caper is really all about. Eventually, they become "partners" with the two, plus their accomplice, Ms. Shirley Ann Farraff, who operates under the nom de guerre of Little Feather Redcorn, the supposed last of the supposedly extinct Pottaknobbee tribe who have a potential one-third ownership of a Native-American casino on the reservation in upstate New York. They plan to pull an "Anastasia" and prove that Shirley Ann is a Pottaknobbee by burying one of her relatives in the grave of one Joseph Redcorn on Long Island. Dortmunder quickly spots lots of holes in the plan and tries to fix them. From the beginning almost everything goes wrong, with hilarious consequences. Like the fine comic writer that he is, Mr. Westlake invests all parts of the book with humor . . . not just the development of the crime story. There are lots of humorous examples of the ways that people outsmart themselves. Before you are done, you will have gone through so many switches of key elements of this story that you'll have run out of fingers and toes to count them on. And you'll love it! After you finish the book, think about a time when you tried to get something for nothing . . . and outsmarted yourself. How can you avoid repeating that error in the future? In my case, I remember spending 6 weeks working on a national contest while I was in high school. As I just about completed the contest entry, I realized that I had made a strategic error in my work process . . . and had no chance of winning. I would have made more money if I had worked for 25 cents an hour than I did with my nonexistent gains from working on that contest. I can avoid that problem by accurately assessing whether the likely gain is worth the effort before I start.
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