Monthly Archives: April 2010

The Hot Rock and Bank Shot: The first two John Dortmunder novels

Posted on April 23, 2010 by | 4 Comments

the-hot-rock-dortmunderTitle: The Hot Rock
Author: Donald E. Westlake
Publication Year: 1970
Pages: 224
Genre: Crime Fiction Count for Year: 13

bank_shot

Title: Bank Shot
Author: Donald E. Westlake
Publication Year: 1972
Pages: 249
Genre: Crime Fiction
Count for Year: 14

How I discovered

My brother-in-law introduced me to Westlake last year and I’ve read a few of his Parker series, written under his pseudonym Richard Stark, plus a few others that aren’t part of any series. I had heard of the Dortmunder series, but since I’m such a stickler for reading books in order, I wasn’t sure that our library had all of them. As of this past week, I’ve learned that the library has all but two of them, and a Facebook friend is going to “hook me up” with the other two in the near future.

Review

The premise for each is extremely simple: robbery. In the first book, the prize is a $500,000 emerald; in the second, a bank. The protagonist in both is John Archibald Dortmunder, whom is described on the book jacket of the very first novel thusly:

John Archibald Dortmunder is the archetypal criminal manqué. Brought up in an orphanage in the Midwest, he is 37 years old, served in the “police action” in Korea, was arrested twice for robbery following his release from the service, and was briefly married to a nightclub entertainer named Honeybun Bazoom from whom he was granted an unconditional divorce.

In each book, he is joined by a team of criminals. Two of them belong to the team in both books, with a few others only in each. The two constant characters, at least, for these first two Dortmunder books, are Kelp, “an ex-con with a penchant for stealing cars with MD license plates,” and Stan Murch, described as “a crook who lives with his mother, a cab driver and collects stereo records of ‘Sounds of Indianapolis.’”

In the first, he is also joined by Roger Chefwick, who is the team’s “lockman” and Greenwood; in the second, a girlfriend May, another lockman Herman X (who as you might have guessed it belongs to a Black Muslim-like group), Murch’s mother and Kelp’s hapless nephew Victor, who brings the team the proposition to rob a bank.

Whereas in the character of Parker, Westlake creates a hard-boiled serious master criminal, in the character of Dortmunder, he creates a hard-boiled comic foil to Parker — not that Parker doesn’t have his moments of humor. However, in Dortmunder, Westlake brings the comic more to the forefront.

In the first, the comedy is so over the top, from a car crash into the New York Coliseum, a helicopter attack on a police station and a break-out from an insane asylum using a locomotive stolen from a nearby amusement park, that it stretched the credibility just a little too much for me. While I couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the escapades, I also was like, “Uh huh. Sure. I bet that could happen.” as I rolled my eyes.

In contrast, in the second, the comedy stays on target, with one joke: that the team is going to steal a bank, yes, steal a bank. The bank is a temporary bank set in a trailer while a new one is being constructed nearby. What follows is, at times, laugh-out loud funny, for example, as this scene when the bank is reported missing:

“Uhhhh,” said the radio. “Dispatcher.”

“Is this car nine?”

“This is car nine, it isn’t here.”

The dispatcher felt a sudden sense of panic. The trouble wasn’t there? He looked again at the red light, which was still lit even though the buzzer was off, and it was number fift-two. He looked at his typewritten sheet, and fifty-two was the temporary bank. “Well, it was there,” he said.

“I know it was here,” said car nine. “I saw it only five minutes ago. But it isn’t here now.”

The dispatcher by now was completely  bewildered. “You saw it five minutes ago?”

“Last time we went by.”

“Now wait a minute,” the dispatcher said. His voice was rising, and the other two dispatchers looked at him oddly. A dispatcher was supposed to stay calm. “Wait a minute,” the dispatcher repeated. “You knew about this trouble five minutes ago and you didn’t report it?”

“No, no, no,” car nine said, and another voice behind it said, “Let me have that.” Then it apparently took over the microphone, becoming louder when it said, “Dispatcher, this is Officer Bolt. We are the scene, and the bank is gone.”

…

The dispatcher, his voice, nearly as thin as the air where the bank had been, finally said, “The bank is gone?”

“That’s right,” Officer Bolt said, nodding in irritation. “From far away, he could hear more sirens coming. “Some son of a bitch,” he said, “has stole the bank.”

My rating for The Hot Rock: 3 out of 5.

My rating for Bank Shot: 4 out of 5.

My rating system:

5- Classic, must read
4- Worth owning a copy
3- Worth picking up at library
2- Worth skimming at the bookstore
1- Worth being a doorstop

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Pet Peeve No. (#) 3: Food/drink that establishments say they never had even though either a.) they should have or b.) they did, because I had at their establishments

Posted on April 22, 2010 by | 7 Comments

I just noticed in the titles of my previous two posts on pet peeves, I used two different ways to abbreviate number. That is the reason for today’s double number entry. Okay, now with that out of the way, on to (where I was, and am, consistent with the abbreviation of number within the graphic throughout the series, I hope you’ll notice):

Pet Peeve 3

This pet peeve arises out of two different incidents at local establishments. I say “establishments” because one isn’t a restaurant per se as much as it is a donut shop and the other calls itself a diner even though you’ll see it is missing one of the key ingredients to bear that designation. I will not use names to protect the stupidity of said establishments, although if you’re a.) local, you probably can guess the name of the first one since it’s the only diner in town, and b.) a regular eater of donuts, or even if you’re not, you probably have heard of these “donut shops.”

The first part of this pet peeve involves this area diner. A few years ago, I had a problem similar to acid reflux in that I couldn’t swallow food or sometimes drink. The main food and drinks I could have were tortilla chips (usually the Crispy Lime Tostitos) and Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I also occasionally could have a milkshake. So The Wife and I went to this diner in our fair town (yes, continuing the use of the word “fair” today as yesterday, although I haven’t decided yet on whether or not to use “fair share”…although there I just did) and I thought I’d ordered a milkshake.

“We don’t have milkshakes.”

“You don’t have milkshakes? This is a diner, right?”

“We’ve never had milkshakes in the 30 years we’ve been here.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of a diner that doesn’t have milkshakes.”

“….”

“I will never return here again. Put that down on your pad, lady.”

That last quote, I think I said to the Wife in full-snark mode after she made her order for a burger, which they did have but which looked like a burger you would get in a high school cafeteria with the same kind of generic bun sans sesame seeds and good taste.

With our town being a tourist town, especially in the summer and fall, and this diner being in the center of town, it is often a place toward which tourists gravitate. If I happen to be walking on the same street as they are, and see them going toward the diner, I often tell them to steer clear, because the diner doesn’t even serve milkshakes. “What the fahrvergnügen kind of diner is that?” I ask them. Many of them being from New Jersey shake their heads and, in agreement with my assessment, walk the other way.

On those days, I feel I have done my part to help the human race.

The second part of this pet peeve involves an area “donut shop.” A couple of weeks ago, I went in to order my favorite donut: a maple cream donut. When I asked for it, the woman behind the counter looked at me blankly after looking at the selections behind the counter and said:

“We don’t carry that donut.”

“But I’ve had the donut several times here.”

“It must have been a manager’s special.”

“No, I had it here on several occasions.”

“We’ve not had that donut since I’ve worked here.”

“And you’ve worked here for how long? Two weeks, if that? I see ‘Help Wanted’ signs in the window here all the time. The turnover here is atrocious. Do they even pay minimum wage here? Or do you get paid with smiles from customers, which judging by the non-smile on my face means you’re probably getting paid NOTHING and you’re doing this because you’re sadomasochistic.”

“…”

Okay, I didn’t say that second to last quote, at least not out loud. I think it was just expressed in my non-smile. I ordered a peanut butter cream donut, which while I love peanut butter was not as good as the maple cream donut would have been if they had it.

Needless to say, I doubt I will return to the donut establishment either. I’m not much of a coffee drinker anyway and I don’t really have a burning desire to sit in a place with people over the age of 60 telling me about their latest surgery or how Obama is from Kenya and if we don’t protest vociferously, our country is going to become a socialist state right underneath our noses.

“You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear.”

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Pet Peeve #2: Motorcyclists who ride motorcycles without helmets

Posted on April 21, 2010 by | 24 Comments

Yesterday’s pet peeve was cars that don’t stop for pedestrians. Today’s pet peeve also deals with vehicles, but this time, the two-wheeled kind. So, without further adieu…

Pet Peeve

is motorcyclists riding motorcycles without helmets.

Our town is a tourist town here in northcentral Pennsylvania and every spring and summer, we get our fair share of motorcyclists riding through it and to it. It’s common to see motorcycles lining the streets or filling the parking lots of local restaurants.

It’s also common to see some of these motorcyclists not wearing helmets while operating their motorcycles, because under Commonwealth of Pennsylvania law, motorcyclists are allowed to ride motorcycles without helmets if the operators are “21 years of age or older and has been licensed to operate a motorcycle for not less than two full calendar years OR has completed a motorcycle safety course approved by PennDOT or the Motorcycle Safety Foundation.”

Most telling is the note at the end of the fact sheet (cited above in the link) that in answer to a question about helmets leading to neck injuries, the answer is, not surprisingly:

“No. Studies indicate that the use of a motorcycle helmet provides a significant reduction in head and neck injuries.”

Yet walking through our town on Monday, I still spied a biker sitting on his Harley, no helmet in sight. Like many bikers I’ve seen in our town, his head was shaved and in this context, it reminded me of the opening credits of CSI (around the 25-26 second mark):

I imagine his head would be split open as easily as that mannequin head if he were in a crash without a helmet.

One of the main reasons that motorcyclists without helmets is one of my pet peeves is because my wife is an EMT, and as such, she has been to her fair share of motorcycle accidents. It’d be fair (today’s word of the day: “fair” and today’s phrase of the day, in case you missed it, “fair share”) to say that four out of five of them have involved fatalities. Were they helmet-related? I don’t know that for a fact. I don’t know that the people involved would have been saved if they had been wearing a helmet, because of other factors such as speed and extenuating circumstances, namely other larger vehicles.

However, I do know that even a mouse knows to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle:

When God was handing out brains, I think it’d be fair to say that he gave mice a fair share of them. If only it applied to all motorcyclists.

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Rippling in still water

Posted on April 20, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Whenever things get hectic, they get hectic. Or I allow them to get hectic anyway. To wit, today: all I had planned today was going to Eucharistic Adoration this morning and a meeting about traffic improvement in our borough for the paper. Yesterday, those plans went awry.

First, I volunteer at a local senior center. When I got there, one of the other volunteers, who is in his 80s and has been volunteering at the center for 20 years, asked me if I could substitute for him today. Since I originally volunteered on Mondays and Fridays to help “spell” him, how could I refuse?

Second, after I returned home from volunteering at the senior center, I received a phone call from the secretary for the local school board. It has a meeting tonight that in short trumps the other meeting I was planning to attend.

Third, this morning I made the mistake of wanting to check my e-mail and correct a minor error in a blog post I had scheduled for later this morning. So I attempted to connect to the Internet only to learn the connection was down. When I called our Internet service provider, I learned I didn’t have access to the account because it was set up originally for my wife under a business account she had. Frustrated with what I perceived to be a global conspiracy against me, I hung up on the customer service person and continued to tromp and stomp down the sidewalks of our town toward the church where I now sit for Eucharistic Adoration.

I enter the sanctuary and two people are already there visiting with Jesus (in the Eucharist). The quiet is deafening. You literally can hear time ticking away with the clock above the doors at the rear of the church. The disquiet in my mind continues to stir, but is lessening, a whirlpool of undirected emotion, beginning to spin ever more slowly…to lessen to just a few ripples I hope before I am thrown back into the turbulence that is my day today.

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