Crime Pays

Baby, Would I Lie?
by Donald E. Westlake

Brilliance Audio (MP3-CD), $39.25

Dirty Money
by Richard Stark

Grand Central, 288 pp., $23.95

Girls
by Bill James

Foul Play, 224 pp., $23.95

Over the past half-dozen years I have had the privilege to write reviews of new books by the comic (crime) novelist, Donald E. Westlake, and by Bill James, who is at once the most unconventional and underappreciated detective novelist writing today–as well as the best such novelist. I was particularly grateful for those assignments, for I feared that there might not be many more timely opportunities to pay tribute to the two men. I imagined that, as they moved into their seventies, they might grow weary of the strain of writing.

I was wrong. Since 2001 the 75-year-old Donald E. Westlake–who essentially lost a year to an eye ailment–has published nine novels, four of which appeared under the name of his amoral alter ego, Richard Stark. And Bill James, whose real name is James Tucker but who has also written as David Craig and Judith Jones, has published an astonishing dozen novels in the past five years.

My mistake was the product of a false premise. Most of the people I know well are academics, for whom writing is a necessary evil, often more evil than necessary. We face writing as an inspiration to procrastination rather than a task to be savored. But as we write to live, Westlake and James live to write.

With regard to Westlake, my anxieties were not altogether irrational, for I thought a fitting tribute should focus on the adventures of his character, John Dortmunder–master criminal and plaything of the gods. But if Westlake could be counted on to produce, Dortmunder could not. 2001’s Bad News was the tenth in a series (unequalled either for comic genius or consistent excellence) inaugurated in 1970 by The Hot Rock, but the first since 1996. Dortmunder’s infrequent appearances, however, were not the product of authorial indifference towards a character grown stale; rather the reverse. To judge from Westlake’s own account, it took a considerable degree of self-restraint to refrain from writing on Dortmunder more frequently. He summoned that restraint with a view towards keeping Dortmunder fresh:

Many years ago I made a mighty vow that I would never write two novels in a row about John Dortmunder, but would always write at least two books about other people and other things in between. The reason was I didn’t want to overwork John, me, or the reader.

Westlake had seen all too many novelists give in to the temptation to go with the tried, if not necessarily true, and produce novel after novel with the same characters. The all-but-inevitable result is a decline into formula and, sometimes, self-parody. Westlake has avoided that trap, even as he has broken his vow by writing three novels in a row about Dortmunder. More precisely, he has written three “Westlake” novels in a row about Dortmunder, each of which has been succeeded by a “Richard Stark” about that embodiment of criminal amorality, Parker.

To get a sense of these characters you could do worse than begin with What’s So Funny? and Dirty Money. Its title notwithstanding, Dirty Money is less about money acquired in an unsavory manner than about money that needs to be “laundered.” Parker has a dilemma. His spectacular armed robbery of $3 million from a bank in transit–recounted in 2004’s Nobody Runs Forever–proved to be a bit too spectacular: In post-9/11 America, the federal government tends to frown on the use of sophisticated military hardware.

Due to the swiftness and intensity of the government’s reaction, Parker and his associates were forced to hide the proceeds in rural New England before their getaway. So rather than the better part of a million dollars, each man walked away with only a handful of bills for travel expenses. And when one of his confederates was arrested trying to spend such a bill, Parker wrote the money off. The only thing that money could buy was a lighter sentence for his erstwhile partner.

Yet at the outset of Dirty Money, Parker learned that his associate had escaped prior to employing the money as a (plea)-bargaining chip. Hence Parker’s knotty dilemma: Was there a way to move the money that averted the gaze of unusually vigilant authorities? If so, could the dirty money be cleaned? And what would such a laundry bill cost? To explore those latter questions, Parker turned to a mobster with whom he had a somewhat ambivalent past. Their exchange perfectly captures Parker’s worldview and the insightful economy of Stark’s prose:

Admirable as the Parker novels may be, it is the Dortmunder novels that best display Westlake’s genius. Whereas the former have spawned many imitators, the latter are simply inimitable. Moreover, the Dortmunder novels are the only extended series I know in which the later stories are at least as good as the early ones. The two finest–Don’t Ask (1993) and What’s the Worst that Could Happen? (1996)–were published more than 20 years after the series’ debut.

Which brings us to Westlake’s latest Dortmunder tale of woe narrowly and amusingly averted–What’s So Funny?–which in no way disappoints. The problem confronting Dortmunder is an ex-cop looking to establish himself as a private detective, whose business card reads simply “Johnny Eppick, For Hire” (“I didn’t want the clients to feel restricted”). Eppick possesses compromising photos of Dortmunder’s after-hours computer acquisitions, which at a 100 percent discount, initially seem a real steal to Dortmunder. Eppick seeks to enlist Dortmunder’s art of retrieval on behalf of his very first client, Mr. Hemlow, a wealthy and elderly invalid with a lifelong grievance. It is this grievance for which Dortmunder’s professional skills are a means of redress, and Eppick prepares Dortmunder’s recruitment by means that are presumably at odds with progressive corporate practice everywhere but Hollywood or Moscow:

The item to be retrieved is a 700-pound chess set with gold pieces adorned by precious gems–an undelivered gift to Czar Nicholas II–that fell into the hands of an American platoon in the aftermath of World War I, only to be appropriated by the sergeant entrusted with its conversion into cash. The sergeant had prudently disappeared, leaving Mr. Hemlow’s father with nothing to hand down but a legacy of resentment, which the son skillfully nursed. Yet after more than eight decades off the radar, the chess set providentially turns up, offering Mr. Hemlow the prospect of one final satisfaction, and Dortmunder one less reason to resist the siren song of despair.

For the chess set is now at the center of a bitter lawsuit among the sergeant’s 17 children and grandchildren, and Mr. Hemlow’s granddaughter, Fiona, is a (very) junior associate at the firm entrusted with its safekeeping. Therein lies the rub: It is being held in a sub-basement vault “in a building owned by a bank that used to be called Capitalists and Immigrants, two groups of people with really no sense of humor.” When Dortmunder–a man who, in Good Behavior, declared that “I don’t like to believe there’s a place I can’t get in and back out again”–learns of its current housing, he immediately knows it would be impossible to get in and back out again.

He briefly considers flight: “He thought his best move now was to go straight over to Grand Central, take the first train out to Chicago. That’s supposed to be an okay place, not that different from a city.” But Eppik warns him that as technology (“the Internet and all”) has advanced, so has interdepartmental police cooperation, and to such an extent that it’s impossible to disappear. Dortmunder believes him. And that’s just the beginning.

The original dust jacket of Baby, Would I Lie? declared that “Donald E. Westlake does everything but sing.” That still may be true; but it has not prevented him from releasing a CD of that title on which his is the only voice heard. For those who missed it the first time around in 1994, Baby, Would I Lie? is chiefly the tale of country music star Ray Jones, a clever, likable rapscallion whose life has hit something of a rough spot. It’s been 10 years since he’s made the charts, and he’s reduced to headlining twice daily at the Ray Jones Country Theater in Branson, Missouri. He owes the IRS $2 million. He is about to stand trial for the gruesome rape and murder of one of his employees. Yet Ray maintains a proper concern for decorum: “[He] still wasn’t sure it was right to let his songs play on the radio during the trial; seemed disrespectful somehow. Seemed as if he wasn’t taking that poor bitch’s death seriously.”

Making Ray’s life even more of a headache is the press, which descend like locusts on celebrity trials–and like locusts on performance enhancers for celebrity murder trials, even one held where the ratio of “family entertainment centers” to watering holes would drive reporters to drink. Particularly vexatious is the Weekly Galaxy, “the nation’s–probably the world’s–most despicable supermarket tabloid.” Yet Ray is far from believing that all reporters are created evil.

In the midst of these storm clouds he spots a silver lining: “Sara Joslyn, intrepid girl reporter from New York’s Trend magazine.” Ray has every confidence that Sara, surreptitiously guided by a skillful hand (his), will prove the agent of his deliverance. Her earnestness, enthusiasm, and eagerness make her perfect for the role Ray (and Westlake!) leave shrouded in obscurity until the book’s end. Of course, there is more to Sara than meets the eye. Capable as she is of lapsing into a wooly enthusiasm, guaranteed to irritate editors, her intelligence and experience generally keep it well within bounds. (That experience includes a stint as reporter at the Weekly Galaxy, recounted by Westlake in Trust Me on This.)

Probably the only ironclad rule of Donald E. Westlake’s fiction is that the characters tell the story. The reader does not hear the author directly. So on those exceedingly rare occasions in which Westlake steps forth, we’re apt to take notice. And in no book are the glimpses more revealing than in Baby, Would I Lie? Westlake not only discloses that he has long been an aficionado of country music–a courageous statement for a onetime resident of Greenwich Village–but he shares with us the grounds for that admiration. Country music, he says, evinces a genius that doesn’t insist on being recognized as such:

Country music fans don’t envy or begrudge the material success of the performers, and that’s because they don’t see the country stars as being brilliant or innovative or otherwise exceptional people (which they are), but firmly believe the Willie Nelsons and Roy Clarks are shitkickers just like themselves, who happened to hit it lucky, and more power to them. It meant anybody could hit it lucky, including their own poor sorry selves.  .  .  .

Properly translated into the realm of crime fiction, that description equally well applies to Westlake’s work.

A refrain of What’s So Funny? is Balzac’s famous statement that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Were Dortmunder familiar with this piece of wisdom, he would no doubt regard it as twice damned: For it was the animus fostered by one such crime that led to the dilemma in which he finds himself. And for a man who has committed more than his share of great crimes without coming within hailing distance of any fortune, great or small, it would be an unwelcome and unnecessary reminder of the fickleness of the gods.

By a nice coincidence, Balzac himself has a prominent place in the 23rd Harpur and Iles novel, Girls. The series protagonists–clever, level-headed Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and brilliant, indifferently sane Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles–are as distinctive a duo as anyone could find in the realm of detective fiction. Unlike other twosomes, Harpur and Iles rarely act in tandem, and though they tend to work to the same ends, their relationship cannot be described as a partnership. Moved by differing temperaments, virtues, and limitations, each works alone. What they share is an unambiguous recognition of moral ambiguity, ambition, a certain mutual competitiveness, a sense of public responsibility–and a milieu: “grey areas.” The character of their relationship is beautifully summarized in James’s Pay Days (2001). Having received a revealing post humous letter, Harpur, as befits a good subordinate officer, defers to Iles: “Yes, he might have a look into what the letter said on his own. Iles would expect such improper secrecy of Harpur, and it was wrong to thwart the [assistant chief constable].”

Iles’s and Harpur’s is not policing by the book, at least not the police handbook. They rely not on procedures, subtle deductions, or forensic miracles, but on informants (“grasses”) and accommodation. In The Detective Is Dead, Harpur’s reliance on informants–and in particular, the infallible Jack Lamb–is summarized this way:

In Girls James goes one better by telling us the unwritten police manual by which Harpur lives: “Harpur thought in his retirement he might write a guidebook for young detectives called Tending Your Grass.”

Though In the Absence of Iles is a title that admirers of the ACC are apt to be concerned about, it does makes for effective commentary on the most recent Harpur and Iles novels–in which detection is not quite dead but on extended holiday. The protagonists are the two drug lords central to Iles’s policy of enlightened blindness: Mansel Shale and “Panicking” Ralph Ember, toward both of whom James has an almost Westlake-like sympathy. Since Occasionally Ruthless Drug Magnate occupies a far less respectable place on the social ladder than Clever Thief Who Eschews Violence and Targets the Unsympathetic, this seems anomalous. Until you make their acquaintance. Take the following abridgment from the opening chapter of Girls, where Shale makes a persuasive case to Ember that the spectacular execution of a violent Albanian newcomer is necessary to preserve the unofficial arrangement Iles had crafted for them. An arrangement that, for a number of years, had ensured tranquil streets for citizens and mighty profits for the two business associates:

In so doing, Shale shows himself to be among the handful of students of Machiavelli’s Prince who never so much as held the book in their hands; for it was Machiavelli who claimed that a single stupefying execution, well timed, can avoid countless inconveniences down the line.

Ember is a different kettle of fish. He is a smooth, handsome man subject to violent panic attacks at the most inopportune times–and for which his chosen career path provides plenty of opportunities. Ember, the character James seems most to enjoy writing about, is a master of self-deception. In Girls, we see Ember flash back to an episode in which his assistant, Beau Derek, was knifed to death in his presence: It “had to be regarded as a very unsuccessful commercial trip.” In Girls, it is Ember who brings Balzac’s genealogy of wealth to the fore. Yet what, for Dortmunder, is part of a nightmare is for Ember an inspiration: Balzac’s line “buckled” him, “it gave a fruition promise to come.” Or put more simply, big bucks down the line.

Yet Ember is no mere prop for comic relief. He has the ability to look at himself without blinders, and since self-knowledge is in no larger supply in James’s universe than anywhere else, Ember’s depths impress.

Even more impressive than the latest Harpur and Iles novels is the range, quality, and productivity that James has shown in recent years. In A Man’s Enemies (2003)–the sequel to 2001’s Split–he brings back that most unlikely member of the British intelligence services, Simon Abelard, who as a half-black, non-Oxbridge graduate from Cardiff, falls amiss of the traditional demographic profile of those employed by Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Yet in the Britain of the 1990s, things are changing. Abelard seizes the opportunities afforded to him by those changes, and does so with a refreshing perspective: “[He] adored positive discrimination and if he’d had a cat he would have called him after it.”

Both novels examine Abelard’s struggles to adjust to the new conditions of post-Cold War espionage. In Split he wrestles with the dilemma, personal and professional, of tracking a rogue colleague and former friend who has turned his training and talent in deception to the pursuit of private gain (chiefly by large-scale drug smuggling), and the situation only becomes more daunting when, confronted by such professional treachery and the prospect of ill-gotten gains, Abelard’s professional colleagues join the fray. The results aren’t pretty.

In A Man’s Enemies, Abelard faces the flip side of the coin: a former colleague who, repelled by the internecine struggles related in Split, decides to blow the whistle by turning author, Official Secrets Act be damned. Taken together, the two provide a nice portrait of someone steering a morally murky course without falling prey either to the temptation to eschew morality altogether, or embrace it in a manner that gratifies vanity at the expense of responsibility.

As David Craig, James has written two novels, Hear Me Talking to You (2005) and Tip Top (2006), featuring the precocious Welsh detective Sally Bithron, who nicely sums up the villain’s quest for respectability: “Milton Avenue would have conferred on Tully a surface of decent, on-the-up bourgeois status. Surfaces mattered, and not just to geometry.”

Moving away from crime fiction, there is Between Lives (2003), which examines the dilemmas faced by a biographer as fact meets fiction or, more precisely, meets Hollywood. Among its highlights is a film executive, Ted Burston, who prides himself on his gift for disarming by playing the fool. Finding it desirable to gain support for Broken Light, a film seeking to rehabilitate a young man executed for treason during World War II, Burston decides to consult the man’s elderly sister: “On file from the very earliest planning days of Broken Light was a surviving sister of Pax. Her name was Elsie, which could have been acceptable when she was born, but did suggest a distant period now, and some decline.”

Though the conversation does not go quite according to plan, Burston’s qualities shine through:

“I know. Religion’s quite a thing in Wales, I heard.” He considered that one of his best for brainlessness.

James, who taught literature and creative writing at the University of Wales College of Cardiff, has also written a comic novel about life at a third-rate Welsh university, Making Stuff Up. Among the faculty in its Creative Writing department is novelist Len Maldave, eminent author of the self-published Nursery Scimitar. Maldave’s current project is In Times of Broken Light, a dark satire of life in suburbia. With it, and with Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa in mind, Maldave aims to revive the epistolary novel, with a post-modern sensibility. And as a tribute to this fine character, James completed the novel for him, published last year as Letters from Carthage. Few novels can rival its depiction of the depths of marital venom; the wife, in particular, has a gift for evocative loathing, which she freely disposes on friends, lovers, counselors, and “My dear Mother.”

Naturally, enough, and like any human being, however marginal, he loves to believe there are positive aspects to his personality, the damp cut-out.

Don’t get me wrong, he has very sound aspects, and in another time and overseas conditions he would probably be acceptable, and entirely unthreatening.

Women do find his shallowness winning, being unable to believe there can be so much of it, and wishing to plumb–how it happened to me, possibly. Also, there is vigour. He can look almost exotic and more or less unpoignant in sweatshirt and olive green summer trousers.

But enough! Read Westlake and James. You’ll enjoy them. And if you don’t, try reality television.

Steven J. Lenzner is a research fellow in political philosophy at the Henry Salvatori Center of Claremont McKenna College.