Dortmunder is the thief as working stiff, the guy whose great plans never quite work out, and whose foolproof jobs are the gateway to increasingly complicated capers. Many have tried. You'd need an absolute master of offhand comic timing, of jokes that just slide by, someone who can deliver gags so that they land between the deadpan and the winking, someone who knows the difference between saying funny things and saying things funny, to fully capture Westlake's tone. See how one stutterer speaks volumes on the football field. A Poet Speaks Hear the story of a Poet Laureate's trip to Africa.
Most comedies build to a big climax.
Dortmunder stories are more like the sounds you might get out of someone who's collected a bunch of party noisemakers and starts testing them out one after the other, repeating the same patterns and always adding a new one at the end.