The Hook (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Bryce wrote: Kyrgyzstan. Mineral wealth includes gold..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Bryce Proctorr, Detective Grasso (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mystery grand master Donald Westlake (who also writes under the name Richard Stark) is nothing if not prolific: his publishing career includes juveniles, westerns, and short stories. He is perhaps best known by mystery enthusiasts for his comic crime novels (Smoke, Baby, Would I Lie?, Trust Me on This) and his Dortmunder series (What's the Worst That Could Happen?, Don't Ask, Drowned Hopes). The Hook, however, moves beyond the machinations and deduction-driven plots of traditional mystery, following the path Westlake spearheaded with The Ax into the twisted labyrinth of psychological suspense. The Hook is a harrowing story, told with a crisp incisiveness, and its riveting central characters are extraordinary: Bryce Proctorr and Wayne Prentice are fascinating, compelling tangles of neuroses and ambitions, both wonderfully drawn.

Bryce Proctorr has a multi-million dollar contract for his next novel, a wife who is trying to extract the last pound of flesh (but money will do just as well) from him in an ugly divorce, a fast-approaching deadline, and a serious case of writer's block. Wayne Prentice is an author drifting ghost-like through a world that has forgotten his novels; he's gone through two pseudonyms, has watched his sales plummet, and is wondering whether the academic life might be better than this, all things considered. When the two meet by chance in the New York Library, Proctorr has a proposition: if Prentice will give him his unsold manuscript to publish under Proctorr's name, the two will split the book advance fifty-fifty. But as in all Faustian bargains, there is a significant catch: Wayne must kill Bruce's wife.

The murder itself is almost insignificant, a small and sordid endeavor. The novel's real appeal lies in its shadowy reflections of the links between the two protagonists: a bond has been created that neither can break--nor wants to. Westlake cleverly questions the boundaries between actual and vicarious experience, fact and fiction. The novel is strikingly self-referential as it plays with the irony of authors trying to "compose" their own realities: "There are moments in almost any novel when it's necessary to move a character from one point to another, so that you can go on with the story, and this was like that." But what happens when the characters, instead of dutifully obeying the wishes of their creators, strike off on their own in unanticipated and fearful directions? --Kelly Flynn

From Publishers Weekly

This is a very savvy tale of two writers, instantly recognizable to anyone in the publishing world. Bryce Proctorr is a megaseller who gets million-dollar deals; Wayne Prentice, after a promising start, has fallen into the dread midlist, where his sales records haunt him and he publishes under a succession of pseudonyms to present an unsullied record. The problem is that while Proctorr has hit a major writer's block, Prentice is still productive, though his advances are dwindling. So Proctorr, involved in a protracted and draining divorce from a harridan wife, comes up with this terrific notion. He proposes to Prentice, a friend from earlier days: you take my name, I take your book, and we split the proceeds, on one condition: Lucie must be killed. It's a very promising notion, and once Westlake is over the hump of how the very pleasant Wayne will agree to the deed, and actually manage to accomplish it, much to his own surprise, he is left with a very delicate situation. What will the knowledge of the crime do to the relationship between the two men? How will it affect their work habits? Will the dogged New York police detective find out anything? How will Bryce's editor react to Wayne becoming, in effect, his star's ghost? All these issues are skillfully dealt with in Westlake's super-clean, unfussy narration, which manages to make the plight of the left-behind writer almost as lacerating as that of the downsized executive in his brilliant The Ax. In the end, though, he cannot quite bring his story to an unexpected conclusion, and his last scene, though effective enough, seems to have strayed in from a much less subtly told story. 9-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Press; 1st Edition edition (March 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892965886
• ISBN-13: 978-0892965885
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #785,753 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hypnotic, March 24, 2000

By	Ellen Bales "starwriter" (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If he were alive today, Mr. Hitchcock would be proud. "The Hook," reminiscent of "Strangers on a Train," is a powerhouse in a small package. Only 280 pages, this book packs such a wallop it doesn't need to be any more wordy. With only a small handful of characters, each finely drawn, Mr. Westlake keeps things simple very effectively, without having to resort to an overly populated cast. The story starts out as a simple case of quid pro quo. Two writers meet: successful Bryce Proctorr, whose story-telling well has dried up, and the less well-known Wayne Prentice, able to write but not able to sell. They strike a bargain. Proctorr will publish Prentice's latest book under his own name and split the $1 million advance 50/50. But Proctorr has a hook: "My wife must be dead." Unlike other books of this sort, Westlake takes us to places in the human mind we would rather not go, places rife with psychological landmines. We watch in horror as the two writers' lives slowly become one. The shocking ending is quite startling and unexpected, yet not entirely surprising. I didn't seriously believe the author would go there ... but he did.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Westlake Is the best, February 13, 2000

By	Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews (#1 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

It must be over twenty years since authors Bryce Proctorr and Wayne Prentice first met. When they were both aspiring and promising they hit the same haunts, but that was years. Their careers took off in different directions with Proctorr being one of the giants and receiving millions per book while Prentice has faded into the inkwell of nothingness using pen names to hide his dismal selling record. Sales are everything and the computer maintains the history whether it is dismal or not. Now coincidentally, they run into each other doing library research.

Suffering from writer's block, which he blames on his ugly divorce, Bryce offers a lucrative deal to Wayne. Wayne writes the book using Bryce's name instead of Tim Fleet or some other alias and they split the multi-million dollar pot. However, Bryce adds one condition, namely that his ex-wife Lucie must die.

Like his previous novel THE AX, Donald Westlake HOOKS his audience from the start and never lets go until the novel is finished. The psychological suspense story line leaves Wayne stunned and questioning the Faustian deal he accepted. The two writers turn the tale into an exciting novel that will leave readers wanting Mr. Westlake to publish his next book much faster than the three-year gap between this story and his preceding work.

Harriet Klausner

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bold Lessons in Bad Writing, September 16, 2002

By	Eli Post (Whidbey Island, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Hook (Mass Market Paperback)

Cleverness is no substitute for a plausible story with convincing characters. Donald E. Westlake's THE HOOK is a psychological thriller about a murderous collaboration between two novelists. It is also a tutorial on how not to write a suspense novel. Throughout the book, Westlake's antiheroes discuss the difficulty in writing good fiction and cite failings in their own prose, such as inconsistent characters and a novel's premise that is at best a short story. The joke is on the reader for the much acclaimed Westlake is far too talented not to be referring to his own book.

Naming his protagonists Proctorr and Prentice for proctor and apprentice and titling their fictional works, The Domino Doublet, Two Faces in the Mirror, The Shadowed Other, does not make the grade as philosophical inquiry, psychological insight or character development. Instead of a meaningful intelligent story the reader gets gamesmanship.

Westlake places concept over believability resulting in an impossible premise that requires inconceivable behavior by the characters. After a quick set-up in Chapter 1 and an early climax in Chapter 8, Westlake spends much of the book's other twenty-nine chapters explaining his characters and excusing himself. In Chapter 17 he admits as much when he writes, "Some behavior is wrong, some reaction is wrong. It's a rip in the fabric of the novel, but it's necessary to get the story where it has to go, so the novelist merely sighs and shakes his head and does it." In real life, both Proctorr and Prentice would be in custody by Chapter 9. After numerous dead ends, Westlake surrenders and leaves his story's conclusion to the reader to resolve.

Still one has to admire Mr. Westlake's fearlessness as he writes about a literary star's work being published, regardless of merit, solely on the strength of the author's name and past sales.