Provenance: Apparition Books, Renton, which has an excellent collection of esoterica, plus solid SF and mystery sections. After discussion of caper films among my Saturday night group which mentioned the movie version, I found this copy, its spine uncracked, on its shelves.
Review: I've talked about Donald Westlake before in these pages, and how he balances both hard-bitten, hard-boiled protagonists with lighter, more human-sized, comical characters. The Hot Rock is an example of the latter. I was attracted to it because, many years ago, I saw the movie version with Robert Redford and George Segal, and when the subject came up in our group, I kept my eyes out for a copy.
This is the first of the novels featuring John Dortmunder, a very good thief with very poor luck. He goes free from prison and an old buddy picks him up in a stolen car with MD plates. The old buddy, Kelp, has a job for him - stealing a large emerald belonging to an African nation on the behalf of a rival African nation. Dortmunder is uncomfortable with the idea, but lacking a lot of options, throws in with Kelp.
They put together a team: Dortmunder is the planner. Kelp is the contact. Murch is the driver (who obsesses about driving), Chefwick is the locksmith (who is model train fan), Greenwood is the all-around, the utility outfielder of the group, a hapless romantic. They're all mugs who have had their run of hits and misses, but never a big score. They meet in the back of a bar and plan out the heist from the New York Coliseum. No small thing. The heist works, until it doesn't. Greenwood gets caught with the emerald.
So now the plan becomes how to get Greenwood out of jail with the emerald. And they do, but they don't. Author and screen critic Robert McKee refers to this as "the gap" which drives character development - the space between character expectations (Greenwood gets the gem) and reality (The cops catch Greenwood). That sets up the next part of the heist (getting Greenwood back) and ratchets up the tension as a result. This happens a number of times - where they succeed until they fail. And as Gilda Radner's character, Rosanne Rosannadanna says, "It's always something."
And so it is. Dortmunder is the pessimist and ready to walk away several times. Kelp is the optimist, and keeps bringing him back into the fold. The risks get bigger with every iteration, as do the resources. The plot bounces along nicely, the characterization is good, and Westlake has an economy of style that plays out incredibly well here.
Anyway, after talking about it in our Saturday night group, we went hunting for the film version from 1972, with Redford, Segal, Paul Sands, and Zero Mostel. And we couldn't find it. Anywhere. Not streaming. Not on Amazon. Not even at the venerable and incredible Scarecrow Video. which is the last local outpost of rentals. In our overheated, overproduced, content-heavy modern times, it is not to be found. I found a Spanish-language version, but that's not the same thing at all. I remember seeing it in the theaters fifty years ago, and seeing it on TV once or twice, but the ground has opened up and swallowed it whole. Would love to know the story of why.
Maybe we have to plan a heist.
More later,
