The last of Donald E. Westlake’s books, Get Real, both is and isn’t a conclusion to the Dortmunder series. You could read it as just another entry, if you didn’t know that it was Westlake’s last book: a reality show producer wants to make a show about Dortmunder and the gang pulling a job, which frankly is a premise that I couldn’t wait to see Westlake take on. And the satire about reality T.V. is great, though at a couple of points I thought the plot was a bit loose, and it was thoroughly enjoyable.
But on another level, I noticed that everyone in the gang got a chance to make a specific useful contribution to the plan, which is not something that happens in all (or even most?) of the books. And, well, Jo Walton puts it better than I could:
Dortmunder hasn’t aged and now he will never die, because the one person who could have killed him chose to spare him. Dortmunder is immortal now, and in this last adventure, he smiles twice in one day.
I don’t know whether Westlake thought this book would or might be the last, but there are far worse notes to end on.