num_pages: 249
description: John Archibald Dortmunder is the archetypal criminal manque. Brought up in an orphanage in the Midwest, he is 37 years old, served in the "police action" in Korea, was arrested twice for robbery following his release from the service, and was briefly married to a nightclub entertainer named Honeybun Bazoom from whom he was granted an uncontested divorce. For reasons totally beyond his comprehension, Dortmunder is chosen to lead a gang of master hoodlums. Their to steal an emerald valued at $500,000. Their Major Patrick Iko, a mustached African diplomat whose country has just lost the gem through a thoughtless political decision. The specialists Dortmunder selects for his impossible mission an ex-con with a penchant for stealing cars with MD license plates. Stan a crook who lives with his mother, a cab driver, and collects stereo records of "Sounds of Indianapolis." Roger the railroad nut, a skinny man of late middle age, whose three H-O gauge trains constantly couple and uncouple on H-O gauge track in a waist-high plywood platform in his basement. What follows in this delightful new novel by Donald E. Westlake is an unparalleled mixture of laughter and thrills, featuring a car crash into the New York Coliseum, a free-swinging helicopter attack on a police station, and a wild breakout from an insane asylum on a Tom Thumb locomotive stolen from a nearby amusement park.
language: English
title: The Hot Rock
titlecomplete: The Hot Rock (Dortmunder, #1)
genres: Fiction, Adventure, Mystery, Thriller, Comedy, Noir, Detective, Mystery Thriller, Humor, Crime
ratings_count: 6163
series: Dortmunder
awards: awardedAt: 31564800000
name: Edgar Award
category: Best Novel
publisher: Simon & Schuster