{"id":759,"date":"2013-08-31T12:51:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-31T12:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=759"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:34:28","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:34:28","slug":"westlake_06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2013\/08\/westlake_06\/","title":{"rendered":"Westlake, Donald E.: (05) <cite>Why Me?<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.steelypips.org\/weblog\/2013\/08\/butcher_02-14.php\">Dresden Files<\/a>, I needed a palate cleanser before I went on to another urban fantasy book, so I returned to the world&#8217;s slowest Donald E. Westlake Memorial Dortmunder Re-Read. <strong><cite>Why Me?<\/cite><\/strong> is the one where Dortmunder accidentally steals a ruby ring that gets everyone, and I do mean everyone, out for his blood. <\/p>\n<p>This is the book that introduces Stoon&mdash;though, as I recall, we never actually <em>meet<\/em> Stoon, he&#8217;s always the hope that falls through and requires Dortmunder to deal with Arnie. It has more slurs than usual thanks to the POV of Chief Inspector Mologna, another to-be-recurring character. It&#8217;s also the book with Dortmunder and Kelp&#8217;s phone adventures, by which I mean landline because it was written in the early 1980s. Oh, and it has one of the very few queer characters in any Dortmunder book&mdash;at least, right now I can&#8217;t think of any others&mdash;in Mologna&#8217;s gay assistant, who is stereotypically flamboyant but (1) highly competent and (2) possibly playing up the swish to get on people&#8217;s nerves. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway, great fun, well into the stride of the series, and just what I needed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the Dresden Files, I needed a palate cleanser before I went on to another urban fantasy book, so I returned to the world&#8217;s slowest Donald E. Westlake Memorial Dortmunder Re-Read. Why Me? is the one where Dortmunder accidentally steals a ruby ring that gets everyone, and I do mean everyone, out for his blood. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2013\/08\/westlake_06\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Westlake, Donald E.: (05) <cite>Why Me?<\/cite>&#8220;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,66,6],"tags":[433],"class_list":["post-759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-dortmunder","category-mystery","tag-westlake-donald-e"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}