So [after reading The Road to Ruin], in search of a Dortmunder plot, I went back to one of my very favorite Dortmunders, What’s the Worst That Could Happen?. As far as I’m concerned, this is very nearly perfection: it has a lovely packed plot (Dortmunder gets caught by a rich householder who steals a ring off his hand, Dortmunder pulls several jobs trying to get it back), great observations about New York and D.C. and Las Vegas, and the highest density of favorite lines of probably any of the books. For instance, I’ve been known to cite this passage as a remarkably accurate description of the drive to D.C.:
Two hundred fifty miles between New York City and Washington, DC, give or take a wide curve or two. Through the Holland Tunnel and then New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey Del Maryland Maryland Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Baltimore Maryland lunch Maryland outskirts of Washington outskirts of Washington outskirts of Washington, and now it was up to Anne Marie to be the harbor pilot who would steer them to their berth.
They had run along two kinds of highway. One was country highway, with green rolling hills and leafy trees and a wide grassy median between the three northbound and the three southbound lanes, and it was all pleasantly pretty every time you looked at it, and it was all the same pleasantly pretty every time you looked at it, and the goddam green hills were still there every time you looked at it. And the other was city highway, where the lanes were narrower and there was no median strip and the traffic was full of delivery vans and pickup trucks and there were many many exits and many many signs and the road’s design was a modified roller coaster, elevated over slums and factories, undulating and curving inside low concrete walls, sweeping past tall sooty brick buildings with clock falls mounted high on their facades that always told the wrong time.
Or there’s the hit musical of the bad guy’s company:
As for that show, it was Desdemona!, the feminist musical version of the world-famous love story, slightly altered for the modern American taste (everybody lives). Hit songs from the show included “Oh, Tell, Othello, Oh, Tell,” and “Iago, My Best Friend” and the foot-stomping finale, “Here’s the Handkerchief!”
Or the line that just sums up Dortmunder perfectly:
“Good news,” Dortmunder said, with some surprise, as another person might say, Look! A unicorn!
This is an interesting contrast with Road to Ruin in another sense, as they both have crooked rich guys as Dortmunder’s targets, but the one in Road to Ruin is far less likeable. I’m not sure if this was a result of the shifting public perception of CEOs (as one character says, “every white-haired man in America that owns a suit has testified in front of Congress”), or just of a feeling that the time had come ’round again for a nastier antagonist.
I’d like to think that What’s the Worst That Could Happen? is not necessarily the pinnacle of the Dortmunder series, but as Westlake has just turned seventy-one, it may be time to start ramping my expectations of future books down. It’s much to Westlake’s credit that he hasn’t succumbed to the Brain Eater far earlier, as some other authors have, and of course he may never do so, but expect the worst while hoping for the best and all that.
I’m listening to this one right now as an audiobook (Books On Tape edition), and the reader is quite good. This is the third Dortmunder I’ve listended to (The Hot Rock, Bank Shot, and What’s the Worst That Could Happen, and I’m impressed with the narrator’s ability to convey consistent and appropriate voices without resorting to obvious New York accents. His voices for Max Fairbanks and his wife are wonderful, and he’s settled on a manner for Andy Kelp that I think is very well-chosen. Ironically, Dortmunder himself is the biggest problem, as he is so colorless that it’s probably hard to find a consistent characterization for him.
David, who’s the narrator? I might want to check these out–I know this one so well that frankly another person’s phrasing might be annoying, but some of the others might work.
The series is read by Michael Kramer. I can say for sure that no other voice for Andy Kelp will ever sound right after this…
Hmm, some of them are in the library system, though on tape. Interesting . . . Thanks!
Another data point — I’ve just started listening to Kramer’s reading of Why Me?, and he really is excellent. His rendition of the sound effects associated with breaking into the jewelry store, and the pipe smoker lighting his pipe, were superb.
On a related note, I was channel-surfing the other day and saw that a movie of What’s the Worst That Could Happen was showing. Wonderful!, I thought, one of my favorites. So I switched over just as it was starting, and saw…
… some very low-budget titles, announcing that the movie stars Martin Lawrence. Huh?
I managed to tolerate about 90 seconds of the film before switching away in disgust. Everything that makes Dortmunder Dortmunder was utterly absent from Lawrence’s portrayal. I don’t mind making Dortmunder black — that could work — but I really mind making him silly. Even Whoopi Goldberg as Bernie Rhodenbarr looks like a good idea compared to this one.
David: I recently checked out a CD recording of _Watch Your Back!_ from the library, but I haven’t had time to see what I think of the reader–who is not, IIRC, Kramer. (They didn’t have any Kramer readings on CD.)
You should be glad you managed to avoid knowledge of the Martin Lawrence travesty for as long as you did. Though Danny Devito was quite a natural choice for Max Fairbanks.
Though Danny Devito was quite a natural choice for Max Fairbanks.
Danny DeVito?? Heavens, my mental image of Max was always much more burly — a large, craggy-handsome, vigorous sort. People who look like Danny DeVito do not become self-made corporate titans. I’d have said Max von Sydow or John Rhys-Davies. Or Tony Roberts in his “Play It Again, Sam” persona.
Of course, my mental image is probably colored by the voice Kramer gave him in the audiobook reading. Rich, measured, a bit full of itself, affected. Pretty much the opposite of Danny DeVito.
[originally posted April 6, reposted after database crash]
…and now I see that there was a movie version of Why Me?, made in France but in English:
WHY ME?
(1990, Epic)
Released in France, but in English
96 minutes
Based on the novel by Donald Westlake
Directed by Gene Quintano
Starring Christopher Lambert as GUS CARDINALE (Dortmunder in the book)
with Christopher Lloyd as “Bruno Daley” (i.e. Andy Kelp)
Also starring Kim Greist, J.T. Walsh, Michael J. Pollard, Tony Plana, Lawrence Tierney, John Hancock
Have you seen this? Has anyone ever seen this?
David
David: Never heard of it, and NetFlix doesn’t have it, so I doubt we’ll ever see it.
Belated comment: after finishing What’s the Worst that Could Happen?, I agree that it is nearly perfection. I wonder whether Westlake considered stopping the series there.