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John Dortmunder and company are hired by an U.N. African Ambassador to steal the famed Balabomo Emerald from the hands of a rival African country. But their daring and clever burglarly goes awry, and the emerald slips through their fingers. Undaunted, Dortmunder chases the gem by plane, train and automobile in hot pursuit of the hot rock.
Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race; which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings, Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor. Chet knows he had nothing to do with it.
Al Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the syndicate. And this was a delicate job that Rovito had given him: retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from the fresh grave of the drug mule who was accidentally buried wearing it. There was just one problem (at least - just one to begin with): It turned out the grave was empty. Suddenly Engel was the one finding himself “in deep”.
The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life....
Art doesn’t mean to tell Liz Kerwin that he has a twin. He’s on Fire Island, and she’s so beautiful that he’s willing to say anything for a chance at getting rid of her clothes. So when Liz mentions an identical twin sister, Art blurts out that he has a twin too. His name is Bart, he says, and describes the most boring man he can dream up. Liz thinks he would be perfect for her sister Betty. When Art meets Betty, she asks about his brother. Hoping for a chance at the family fortune, Art dons a pair of glasses and slicks back his hair....
Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
John Dortmunder and company are hired by an U.N. African Ambassador to steal the famed Balabomo Emerald from the hands of a rival African country. But their daring and clever burglarly goes awry, and the emerald slips through their fingers. Undaunted, Dortmunder chases the gem by plane, train and automobile in hot pursuit of the hot rock.
Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race; which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings, Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor. Chet knows he had nothing to do with it.
Al Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the syndicate. And this was a delicate job that Rovito had given him: retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from the fresh grave of the drug mule who was accidentally buried wearing it. There was just one problem (at least - just one to begin with): It turned out the grave was empty. Suddenly Engel was the one finding himself “in deep”.
The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life....
Art doesn’t mean to tell Liz Kerwin that he has a twin. He’s on Fire Island, and she’s so beautiful that he’s willing to say anything for a chance at getting rid of her clothes. So when Liz mentions an identical twin sister, Art blurts out that he has a twin too. His name is Bart, he says, and describes the most boring man he can dream up. Liz thinks he would be perfect for her sister Betty. When Art meets Betty, she asks about his brother. Hoping for a chance at the family fortune, Art dons a pair of glasses and slicks back his hair....
Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He's also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as part of the off-the-books black box Orphan program, designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence assets - i.e. assassins. He was Orphan X. Evan broke with the program, using everything he learned to disappear.
Sunshine State trivia buff Serge A. Storms loves eliminating jerks and pests. His drug-addled partner Coleman loves cartoons. Hot stripper Sharon Rhodes loves cocaine, especially when purchased with rich dead men's money. On the other hand, there's Sean and David, who love fishing and are kind to animals - and who are about to cross paths with a suitcase filled with $5 million in stolen insurance money. Serge wants the suitcase. Sharon wants the suitcase. Coleman wants more drugs... and the suitcase.
Keller possesses all the qualities of a professional killer. He's cool, confident, reclusive, icy, and ruthlessly efficient. But this seasoned hit man is also prone to self-doubt as he finds himself caught in the clutches of a mid-life crisis.
Meet Peter Brown, a young Manhattan emergency room doctor with an unusual past that is just about to catch up with him. His morning begins with the quick disarming of a would-be mugger, followed by a steamy elevator encounter with a sexy young pharmaceutical rep, topped off by a visit with a new patient - and from there Peter's day is going to get a whole lot worse and a whole lot weirder.
Published in 1945, Cannery Row focuses on the acceptance of life as it is: both the exuberance of community and the loneliness of the individual. Drawing on his memories of the real inhabitants of Monterey, California, Steinbeck interweaves the stories of Doc, Henri, Mack and his boys, and the other characters in this world where only the fittest survive, to create a novel that is at once one of his most humorous and most poignant works.
Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.
In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson's cover version of The Winter's Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology, and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.
You probably haven't noticed them. But they've noticed you. They notice everything. That's their job. Sitting quietly in a nondescript car outside a bank making note of the tellers' work habits. Lagging a few car lengths behind the Brinks truck on its daily rounds. Surreptitiously jiggling the handle of an unmarked service door at the racetrack. They're heisters.
From Amazon number-one best-selling author Mark Dawson, this novella is an introduction to John Milton, the most dangerous assassin in the pay of Her Majesty’s government. Meet John Milton. He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd, but you wouldn't want to be on his list.
This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you've never seen it.
Arriving home at dawn after another failed burglary, John Dortmunder - the anti-hero of Donald Westlake's popular comic crime series - is shocked to find his apartment occupied by a notorious cellmate everyone had supposed (and hoped) had been jailed for life.
What, you ask, is a Fred Fitch? Well, for one thing, Fred Fitch is the man with the most extensive collection of fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets in the Western hemisphere, and possibly in the entire world. For another thing, Fred Fitch may be the only New York City resident in the twentieth century to buy a money machine.
It should have been a lovely English country-house weekend. But the unfortunate guest list is enough to exasperate a saint, and the host, Sir Arthur Billington-Smith, is an abusive wretch hated by everyone – from his disinherited son to his wife's stoic would-be lover. When Sir Arthur is found stabbed to death, no one is particularly grieved and no one has an alibi. The unhappy guests find themselves under the scrutiny of Scotland Yard's cool-headed Inspector Harding, who has solved tough cases before.
Specialist in the scam, the con, and the rip-off, Jerry Manelli is running around New York hot on the trail of a priest: a thousand-year-old, two-foot-tall, ugly, misshapen, dancing Aztec priest made of solid gold, with eyes of pure emeralds, worth a million dollars.
Somebody stole it from its museum home in South America and smuggled it through U.S. Customs in a shipment of plastic imitations. But the wrong one got delivered, and the million dollar statue, mixed with the 15 copies, is somewhere in New York. Jerry Manelli is searching for it, as are Wall Street financiers, New Jersey union thugs, Manhattan aristocrats, college professors and PR men, liberated women and unliberated wives, tough guys and conmen, and sharpshooters of every kind.
From Harlem to Greenwich Village, from Long Island to Connecticut, the motley group races in and around New York in this comic adventure of the 1970s.
It's very a very funny and sometimes hilarious story and the narration is very good. However, the great number of characters makes it difficult to follow if like me you listen to audiobooks mostly while driving and walking errands.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
I listen while walking the dogs, or vacuuming, or doing other household/yard work tasks.
I could not keep the multiple characters straight without REAL concentration... which of course, I did not have. The characters are listed in the beginning but I could not reference that chapter each time I questioned, who was that?
Luckily, I have listened to many Westlake stories and love him as an author.
If this had been my first, there would not have been a second.
But since I do so enjoy the Dortmunder series, I will keep up with the goal of listening to all his novels.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
If you could sum up Dancing Aztecs in three words, what would they be?
a madcap adventure?
What did you like best about this story?
the wild ride. I love every single Westlake book. But there were times I wanted to put it down and walk away. See Comments, below*
What about Brian Holsopple’s performance did you like?
He's a great reader for tongue-in-cheek Westlake. He doesn't overdo. Except as below, in Comments*
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
Uh, not exactly a "moving" story. A lot made me laugh.
Any additional comments?
*Well, it's racist. The Mexicans are more or less portrayed as individuals, but the black people are cartoons, and some of this may be the fault of the reader. Seriously Amos N Andy stuff.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
this may not be one of his best but Westlake is always enjoyable and his comic capers are generally good for light fun. and he's not a bad writer, usually witty with a dash now and then of something literary, and sometimes just plain laugh out loud funny.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful
I will fist caution the reading/listening audience with this: there are MANY offensive slurs in this book. Almost to the point where I was discouraged from reading further. However, this is one of the funniest books I have ever read! Westlake takes the caper theme to another level. His descriptions of what is actually going on under the facade will stick with you. Worth checking out!
Unbelievable cast of highly entertaining characters in a hilarious mystery. Loved this!! Extremely clever writing.
The book is long and complicated but it is really fun! Well read! So many intertwining stories but all comes together at the VERY end.
cracking farcical but realistic plot at cracking pace. great characters irreverent yarn. Just a peach.