Drowned Hopes
A Dortmunder Mystery
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Dortmunder's past comes back to haunt him when he returns home after an unsuccessful burglary and finds his old cellmate sitting in his living room. He needs Dortmunder's help in retrieving $700,000 that he'd buried in a small town 30 years before. The problem is that, while he sat in jail, the State of New York flooded the area to build a reservoir; the loot is now under a few feet of dirt and many feet of water. Being a man of great determination but few ethical principles, the thief plans to blow up the dam, emptying the reservoir but also flooding the inhabited countryside to get at his stash. Dortmunder pleads with him to be allowed to retrieve the money another way. His first attempt fails. And his second. And third. Meanwhile the thief is losing patience...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Westlake here brings back decent, smart and unlucky John Dortmunder for a seventh adventure. After a typically unrewarding night of attempted burglary, Dortmunder comes home to find ex-cellmate Tom Jimson ensconced in the living room. Jimson, given a 70th-birthday release from an overcrowded state prison, is as calmly venal and vicious as ever as he asks Dortmunder's help in reclaiming a $700,000 stash from an old robbery. The loot was buried in an upstate New York town that was subsequently flooded to become part of New York City's reservoir system. Jimson's plan to blow up the reservoir dam will doom nearby towns, so Dortmunder must concoct a more humane solution. A motley cast turning through a dizzying variety of plot twists will keep readers laughing. Most risible is the perfectly sensible bewilderment of Westlake's Runyonesque New Yorkers at life upstate: ``If we stay here much longer, we'll start buying one another birthday cards.'' Vintage Westlake.
