Book Review

By Derryll White

Westlake, Donald E. (2008).  Somebody Owes me Money.

                 “Westlake is one of the greatest crime writers in the business.”  – Los Angeles Times

This is a very simple story.  Chet Conway is a New York cabbie living paycheck-to-paycheck.  He gets a private tip and wins big on a horse and then gets stiffed by the bookie.  It all flows from there.

Donald E. Westlake’s genius is that he makes the mundane commonplace interesting. Chet is so normal that the reader immediately relates with him.  When he unleashes unexpected, and stupid, acts of courage we all go “yes I could have done that – maybe!”

Westlake’s comic strategy keeps the pages gleefully turning. Chet has a very beautiful blonde accomplice, sigh! This is another great example of Hard Case Crime, the publisher, getting it all right including the striking hardboiled cover art they commissioned from Michael Koelsch.

One of the very notable modern crime writers, Lawrence Block, said “Donald Westlake’s…. novels are among the small number of books I read over and over.  Forget all that crap you’ve been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust – these are the books you’ll want on that desert island.”

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Excerpts from the novel:

SETTING – Also, driving a cab is a lot more pleasant than you might think.  You’re dealing with the public all day long, but only as individuals, one or two at a time.  People are best one or two at a time.  Also, economics being what they are, you’re generally dealing with a better class of customer.  You get to talk with lawyers, businessmen, actors, tourists from Europe, all sorts of that kind of people.  You get to look at a certain number pf pretty girls, too, and sometimes, have nice friendly conversations with them, and on rare occasions make a date with one.

CABBIE – We got up on the West Side Highway at twenty to four and left the Belt Parkway at Pennsylvania Avenue in Brooklyn at just four o’clock.  In between I’d made a couple of small attempts at conversation, but she was the strong silent type, so I let it go.  I’m content to look, if that’s the way they want it.

    The first half mile of Pennsylvania Avenue is through filled-in swampland.  There’s no solid ground at the bottom, just dirt piled into a swamp, so the road is very jouncy and bouncy, full of heaves and holes, and even though there’s little traffic at any time there and no housing or pedestrians around, you can’t make very good time.  The snow plows, probably because of the uneven road surface, hadn’t been able to do much of a job here, so that slowed me even more.

    Which meant I was doing about twenty when the girl stuck the gun into the back of my neck.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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