GET REAL: A Dortmunder Novel
Donald E. Westlake
Grand Central Publishing
Mystery
ISBN: 9780446178600
Books and the authors who write them become important parts of our lives. A new novel featuring a beloved series character by our favorite author becomes a special event, something anxiously anticipated. So it has been for the millions of fans of Donald E. Westlake over the years. Westlake died at the age of 75 last New Year’s Eve.
You know an author has left his mark when the first thing you think of after the passing of the man is the passing of his creations. When I heard that Westlake had died, my first selfish thought was, “Well, what happened to Parker, the noir heist man he wrote about as Richard Stark, or to John Dortmunder, the hardworking burglar who plans so often went so wrong?” And the sad finality is that they, like Sherlock Holmes, Steve Carella and the gang from the 87th Precinct, are gone now as well.
But sometimes not without a glorious sendoff, a final gift in the form of one last book. GET REAL is the 14th and final Dortmunder novel. It is not a sad occasion but a joyous book that will make you want to go right back to the start and reread the entire series starting with THE HOT ROCK in 1970.
Westlake was a prolific author of over 100 books and a three-time Edgar Award winner. He could write very dark stories --- noir --- with the best of the hard-boiled masters. But it was while trying to come up with a Parker novel about a jewel heist that Westlake discovered John Dortmunder, a small-time burglar with big-time plans. And while Parker is about as funny as a massive heart attack --- and has given a few --- Dortmunder naturally finds himself in funny situations.
We meet Dortmunder again on page one of GET REAL waiting on a New York street corner for his getaway driver and crew mate, Stan Murch, who has a lead on a job. Westlake describes Dortmunder: “A slope-shouldered, glum looking individual in clothing that hadn’t been designed by anybody, he knew what he looked like when he stood for a while in one place on a street corner, and what he looked like was a person loitering with intent.”
Stan’s mom, who drives a New York City cab, is, like any mom, worrying about her son. Since we have entered some sort of super security state now, where we’re being watched all the time, she declares, “It is time, Stanley, you underwent a career change.” For Dortmunder, it makes no difference, she tells him, since he has no marketable skills anyway. Just what he needs to hear. But he pays closer attention when he finds that she recently had a fare who is a reality TV show producer looking to do a new program based on real crooks.
There are not exactly a lot of things falling off the back of trucks these days for either crooks or professional writers. So the boys agree to meet with the producer, Doug, of Get Real Productions, maker of such cultural classics as “The One-Legged Race.”He takes one look at Dortmunder and sees dollar signs. Imagine a series about a crew of burglars actually planning and conducting a heist. It sounds like something out of Paddy Chayefsky’s classic 1976 movie Network.
But the producer is serious. Westlake writes, “‘These guys,’ Doug said, ‘have a certain grungy kind of authenticity about them that will play well on the small screen.’” Doug is as fake as his medium and now has wandered into another, possibly dangerous, world. He finds it a little disconcerting that whenever the burglars need to “take a meeting” they simply break into his high-security apartment, sit around and wait for him to get home from work, thus foiling his amorous plans on one occasion.
The Dortmunder crew is quickly operational after meeting in their usual joint, the backroom of the OJ Bar & Grill. There is Andy Kelp, the hustler as upbeat as Dortmunder is dour. He is also a master lock man. Westlake writes, “Andy Kelp liked locks and locks like Andy Kelp.” And then there is Tiny, who nobody but his closest friend dare call by that name. Tiny is described as looking like “three or four” wrestlers “rolled into one.” At one point, Tiny has to carry a ladder. Westlake writes, “If the world wore a propeller beanie, this is what it would look like.” And there is also Judson Blint, aka The Kid, a new recruit and novice thief who joined the group a few adventures back. He takes a much more prominent role here.
What ensues is a comical game of cat and mouse. The burglars conceive of a plan to rip off the multinational corporation that owns the reality TV show while using a small-time heist for the cameras as a diversion. The corporation, which apparently has some nasty secrets of its own, tries to outsmart the crew. After all, these people work in TV, so they must be smart, right?
It is here where Westlake’s brilliance shines through. This is not just a comic caper novel; it also delivers biting social commentary. We learn, for example, exactly what the entire phenomenon of reality TV is: a way for multinational corporations to avoid hiring writers and actors and paying them livable union wages. CBS and Disney aren’t much different from Walmart in that regard.
And, like everything on television, reality TV is fake. The producers have to “shape” the reality to “make it entertainment.” Doug declares, “In the world of reality, we do not have surprises.” When a young, naïve PA loses her job, she asks if she has been fired. “Doug answered. ‘Nobody’s fired, Marcy. It’s just that none of those jobs exist anymore.’”
In that one simple sentence, a brilliant mystery writer captured exactly what happened to millions of American workers in industries from steel to autos to newspapers in the last 30 years. And it was not the small-time crooks like Dortmunder and his friends who committed that robbery. GET REAL is a wonderful coda to a terrific series by one of America’s greatest mystery writers. And as Dortmunder and his crew disappear into their city for the last time, we can be happy that they have a few bucks in their pockets and will live on in literary history.
But you get the sense here that they were never the real pros. The greedy corporations and bankers and Wall Street thieves who stole trillions and got rewarded with billions more from the taxpayers were the real heisters all along. They were capable of the schemes that John, Andy, Stan, Tiny and the Kid could never dream up in a million lifetimes of crime. Donald E. Westlake will be missed, but his work will live on forever. And we were all lucky enough to be around, cheering, when he painted his masterpieces with words. Thank you, Don.
--- Reviewed by Tom Callahan
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