Westlake is one of the all-time great writers. Yet, when I talk books with friends, even voracious readers, I've yet to run into a person who has read him. The guy sold millions of books, so obviously people have read him, just not those I hang with I guess.
His best friend was Lawrence Block, and he's much better known today, partly because he's still alive and Westlake isn't. Block's 1992 novel A Walk Among the Tombstones is being released in movie form this month with the great Liam Neeson as the main character Matthew Scudder.
Block has also written some outstanding crime noir. But, back to Westlake, I just finished his novel Lemons Never Lie, written under the pseudonym, Richard Stark.
When he’s not carrying out heists with his friend Parker, Alan Grofield runs a small theater in Indiana. But putting on shows costs money and jobs have been thin lately – which is why Grofield agreed to fly to Las Vegas to hear Andrew Myers’ plan to knock over a brewery in upstate New York.This has a 4.5 rating out of 5 on Amazon. I gave it a good 7- out of 10.
Unfortunately, Myers’ plan is insane – so Grofield walks out on him. But Myers isn’t a man you walk out on, and his retribution culminates in an act of unforgivable brutality.
That’s when Grofield decides to show him what a disciple of Parker is capable of …
The title refers to it supposedly being bad luck when you sit down at a slot machine and hit three lemons. That's what Grofield does at the start of the book, and sure enough they don't lie.
Westlake is a master of the twist, with a rye sense of humor that puts him among the elite. I highly recommend anything Westlake has written, and LNL is no different.
No comments:
Post a Comment