Customer Reviews

Why Me

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John Dortmunder still operates with plenty of luck going his way. Unfortunately, it's still all bad. From the master of sticky situations and the brilliant, yet doomed to failure plans to overcome them, comes another Westlake farce highlighting the incredibly unlucky Dortmunder.

John inadvertently steals a large and very important ruby and sapphire ring that had in turn, just been stolen before it was to be given to Turkey. The resulting manhunt and shaking down of every known criminal in New York has not only the NYPD and the FBI on his tail, but also every known criminal in New York wants a piece of him too. So the question is, how can Dortmunder evade the police, the Feds, some terrorists and the entire criminal element of New York, and still somehow come up smelling of roses with a cleared name? How indeed!

In an ironic twist, compared to his adventures in The Hot Rock where he couldn't get hold of a valuable jewel no matter how ingenious the plan, Dortmunder know finds himself racking his brain trying to get rid of a similarly valuable jewel - safely, anyway.

Once again, Westlake provides a humorous story where, if anything can go wrong then it will. The predicament that Dortmunder finds himself in is typical of his unfortunate run of luck and is the reason that these books are so enjoyable.

The Byzantine Fire is a magnificient ruby set in a ring coveted by various Eastern European political groups. When it is presented to the Turkish people by the people of the US, it is immediately stolen by the Greeks and placed in a safe. Unfortunately, hiding behind a counter near the safe is the irrepressible Dortmunder, out for a night on the job. His job-burglary. The ring is so valuable that the FBI joins the NYPD and the various political groups in the hunt for the ring. The resulting heat on the criminal community becomes so intense that the criminals decide to hunt for the thief themselves. Figuring prominently in this hunt is the menacing giant Tiny Bulcher, who looks to commit bodily mayhem on several persons in his hunt for the thief. This book is a masterpiece of comedic writing and timing. As always, Westlake's chapters are brief and to the point with more laughs packed in one 3 page chapter than an entire Saturday Night Live season. The action skips from group to group as the hunt begins. Also as always, we have the usual Westlake set pieces-Andy Kelp's latest scheme, the backroom of OJ's, and Dortmunder's frustration with Kelp. In one scene, we are treated to Dortmunder sitting in the police station with the ring stuck on his finger, trying to keep it hidden from his interrogaters. All in all this is another tour de force from Westlake. Have the French critics discovered him yet?

In my house, I have a shelf for books that reach an unmatched level of perfection. Inbetween Hawthorne's "Blithdale Romance" and a battered, but loved Curious George lurks Westlake's Dortmunder books. They have all been read and reread, stained with tears of laughter and cheap gin, dog eared copies that only a collector could love. "Why Me" is my favorite and as priceless to me as a 80 year old New York grandmother giving the finger to an oblivious passing cab. Westlake can do it all, but his true unrecognized talent is bringing New York to life with a group of small time crooks and John Dortmunder as their tired and beaten leader. What should be an easy jewelry store robbery, leaves Dortmunder with a priceless ring and everybody out to get him. Oh sure, some people will complain that they could follow the story without difficultly and there weren't enough "the-cereal-killer-had-a-twin-brother-who-just-happened-to-work-at-the-police-department" twists, but they are missing the rock-um, sock-um robot pacing and kidney stone passing laughs that only Westlake can deliver. Without hesitation, I recommend all of Westlake's books, but if you have to start with just one, I suggest "Why Me." It's a frickin' masterpiece.

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?

Probably this book just wasn't my style, but I found it cheesy at best. I like humorous crime fiction and looked forward to making Dortmunder's acquaintance, only to discover this book really wasn't all that much about him, but spent more time dwelling on various FBI agents and bumbling policemen. I was hoping to follow Dortmunder through a series of escapades, but after the initial burglary, nothing much happened.

However, the book was short and the writing style excellent. Westlake certainly has enormous talent. While I can't recommend you rush out and read this book, if you like Lawrence Block's humorous books, you might very well like Why Me.

Why me is the fifth novel in the Dortmunder series and revolves around an important ring which Dortmunder stumbled upon while hiding in a jewellery store from the store owner. Unbeknownst to our favourite bumbling criminal, professional international thieves have just stolen a culturally important Turkish ring called the Byzantine Fire from the American government who were about to hand it over to its new owners. The local jeweller who Dortmunder is robbing, is the international smuggler for the ring and puts it in his safe for safe keeping until his flight. Of course the jeweller isn't the brightest individual in the world, and just as his cheap locks allowed Dortmunder access, his cheap safe won't keep him out either.

Dortmunder has no idea the ring is so valuable, in fact assumes it's probably a fake and just took it because, well why not? Extreme political pressure falls on the NYPD and FBI to recover the ring and they inturn put extreme pressure on the local criminal underworld. No crim can walk down the street without being hauled down to the station, every crime they had in progress is discovered as their homes and known hangouts are torn apart while the search for the ring intensifies. Someone will pay for this outrage, the criminal underbelly decides to solve the robbery themselves and extract vengeance on the person who has brought this interruption to their lives. Unbeknownst to Dortmunder that someone is him. Also throw in the fact international terrorists are also after whoever stole the ring and plan on killing that person, Dortmunder's going to need all his planning skills to get out of this one alive.

This would be the thinnest off all the Dortmunder adventures published as novels. It's probably fairer to classify it as a novella (half way between a short story and a novel). The thing is too, I think it could have benefited from a bit of editing out of pages, as a lot of the scenes with the New York police or FBI are actually quite boring, plus you've got the normal scenes of Stan waffling on about which roads he took to get to the OJ, why Kemp steals MD plated cars etc. When you take all those pages out though, there's not many pages left so that's probably why they remained. Dortmunder as well is not exactly the nicest guy in this one either and relies on his anti social behaviour towards his friends, especially Andy Kemp, being ignored to get him out of this one. Plus the telephone scenes are very dated, and it is hard to believe Dortmunder being so stupid as to not understand what is going on even if it was new technology in 1983 when Why Me was first published. Story also relies on a guy in a ski equipment shop being really stupid to work. If this is your first Dortmunder adventure, don't be put off, the rest are a lot better than this.

At one time or another, we all get caught up in a furor over nothing (or at least to onlookers and perphieral culprits), and we wonder "Why Me?" Please, God, let this happen to someone else, but not to me! It occurs without premonition and without provocation, just two or three mean criminals to cause trouble for all concerned. John is a 'professional' (though not the best in the trade) thief of jewelry to make a profit. This time, he walked in on a robbery of a jewelry store in New York and takes what he pleases from the safe after the original bad guys had left. He had no idea that he had taken something very valuable until he went to his usual junk store owner to get a pittance for such a beautiful ring.

The Turkish government had given it to USA, the Greeks stole it, and now John has no way of getting it off his hands before he is caught up in an international furor. Donald Westlake used his inspiration and real-life events to draw from to make this a believable happening. The FBI is brought in to find the gem, and Agent Zachary will go to the ends of the earth if needed to make things right again. Chief Mologna (bologna with a capital M) holds regular press conferences to prove that his NYPD are on the case and will soon bring the perpetrator to justice. He listens to an "easy listening" radio station (similar to EZ88) as he travels home in his patrol car. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" played by a million violins; Mantovani lives.

John has expertise in getting in to make a robbery; this time, since he had no way to dispose of the evidence, he decides to just return it! It was too bad he couldn't tell the world about his greatest triumph, as it had turned out to be no more than a circle in which he wound up putting his most magnificent haul back where he'd found it." A triumph is a triumph and so he went to a different bar to order his favorite Double Bourbon on the rocks, as he had the feeling that he is finally at the beginning of a lucky streak. After all, he didn't get caught by the police, FBI, nor the persistant woman with a funny telephone.