Westlake Donald E. (4)

Academy Award nominee Donald Westlake (The Grifters) returns with a never-before-published thriller based on his story for a James Bond movie that never got made with an afterword by Bond producer Jeff Kleeman.

A formerly rich businessman thrown out of Hong Kong when the Chinese took over from the British decides to fix his dire financial problems and take revenge on the Chinese by tunneling under Hong Kong’s bank vaults and stealing all their gold, then using a doomsday device to set off a “soliton wave” that will turn the ground to sludge, causing the whole city to collapse. Only the engineer on his staff who designed the soliton wave technology (intending it for good purposes, to help with construction projects) can stop him, working together with a beautiful young environmental activist who gets caught up in one of the soliton tests and nearly killed.

From the deck of a yacht near the Great Barrier Reef to Australia and Singapore and finally Hong Kong itself, it’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as our heroes first struggle to escape the villain’s clutches and then thwart his insanely destructive plan.

Levine

Each of the stories is a gem of police procedure and pits Levine against the full assortment of activities which makes up a policeman’s lot — from talking a jumper off a ledge to dealing with a child who believes her mother to be a murderer to facing a Mob gunman on a deserted spit of land. With every step Levine takes, with every confrontation, he listens to the sound of his own heart — to judge his actions as well as to record the missing beats, waiting for the one he won’t hear.

There’s no doubt that Charlie Poole was a completely innocuous, lazy, ambitionless young man until the night two of his uncle’s friends came to murder him.

Charlie tended bar in his uncle’s Brooklyn saloon and was perfectly happy to do so. There weren’t many customers, but his uncle didn’t seem to care. Uncle, as a matter of fact, had very good connections with the Syndicate, so Charlie passed messages and mysterious packages about whose contents he never asked questions. He simply didn’t care. He lived above the saloon in a small apartment and read most of the day. Nothing uplifting, mind you, just time-killing. This, then, was his happy life until it was rudely interrupted the night that two of the Syndicate’s enforcers came to enforce him out of the world.

Charlie simply wouldn’t believe it at first; some mistake had been made. He had done nothing. He never had done anything. He would get to his uncle in Manhattan and find him and clear the whole thing up. His uncle would call somebody, and the two thugs downstairs would be redirected. Charlie suddenly realized that the two thugs were no longer downstairs. They were definitely clumping their way upstairs to the apartment where Charlie had run when he realized they actually meant to kill him. He then did probably the most energetic thing thus far in his twenty-odd years of life. He jumped out of the window.

What happens from then on, and the way Charlie runs, his encounters with his uncle who very specifically does help him escape, his own growing astonishment at the menace all around him, his encounters with the higher-ups in the Syndicate, his encounters with the police, and finally his encounter with Chloe, add up to a breathlessly fast-paced and very amusing mystery, with a rare antic quality.

All in all, THE FUGITIVE PIGEON is a delight, and Charlie Poole is a living doll.

You are in the jungles of Belize.

You pick your way carefully along the overgrown trail until you come to the clearing. There, above you, rest the ruins of a Mayan pyramid. Is that a stone whistle at your feet? An idol of a bat-god? Riches surround you and Kirby Galway will be more than happy to smuggle your finds up to the United States in a bale of marijuana. Aren’t you glad you met Kirby?

If you are Innocent St. Michael, wily Belizan bureaucrat, you’re not. After all, you sold Kirby the worthless land and know that there are no treasures — not to mention pyramids — on it. If you are Lemuel the curator, you’re not. After all, these artifacts should be protected — by you and in your own way. If you are St. Michael’s assistant Vernon, you’re not. After all, you involved in a plot to overthrow the government and all the visitors Kirby is bringing in are making your job more difficult.

Perhaps you are one of the two homosexual antique dealers with a secret to keep hidden, or maybe you are Valerie — loved, kidnaped, ordered to be executed and otherwise getting in the way. If you are, meeting Kirby didn’t do anything for your disposition, either.

Now it is turn to meet Kirby Galway and begin the most hilarious adventure of your life.