Westlake Donald E. download all books 9 books

John Dortmunder left prison with the warm words of the warden ringing in his ears and not one chance of going straight. Soon Dortmunder was riding in a stolen Cadillac with venetian blinds, reuniting with old friends and scheming to heist a large emerald belonging to a small African nation. As always, his planning is meticulous. As always, the execution is not. Undaunted, Dortmunder is now chasing the gem by plane, train and automobile. Because this hot rock has a way of getting stolen — not just once, but again and again and again…

Jack Pine was born to be a Hollywood star. He has no morals, no scruples; he will not hesitate to do anything or love anyone if it might advance his career, get him the best roles, or project him ever more firmly into the spotlight.

And success does come, beyond the imagination of Jack’s agents and co-stars — even beyond the hopes of his boyhood friend Buddy Pal, a man who carries with the dark secrets of Jack’s past.

Buddy stands apart, aloof: he alone truly benefits from Jack’s careening ambition and his artful, charming conniving. Others who depend on Jack may fall by the wayside, but how can the affable star be blamed?

In fact, Jack Pine can be excused anything — until he carries out the final sin, for which there can be no pardon.

Tom Garrity and Joe Loomis are cops in New York — commuters to a job in a city where people often feel like animals. As cops, they’re at the center of it. The brutalizers and the brutalized. Unable to take much more of it, they invent a romantic dream for getting the hell out. The cops decide to become robbers.

Joe discovers that a blue uniform will get you in anywhere; allow you, for instance, to hold up a liquor store without even being suspected. He and Tom decide to pull one big caper that will net them each a million. Then they’ll wait around a year, and after that pull out for good. They offer their services to the Mafia, because on their own they don’t know what crime to commit for that kind of money. A Mafia boss named Vigano points them in the right direction. After that there is no turning back, and no guarantee that they’ll make it.

What happens to Tom and Joe and their families as they make their breakaway move is what COPS AND ROBBERS is all about. Here is a major novel on a major theme by Donald E. Westlake who, in telling a brand new kind of story, makes use of his proven ability to create suspense and entertainment.

Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race. Which might have turned out okay, except that when he went to collect his winnings Chet found his bookie lying dead on the living room floor.

Chet knows he had nothing to do with it — but just try explaining that to the cops, to the two rival criminal gangs who each think Chet’s working for the other, and to the dead man’s beautiful sister, who has flown in from Las Vegas to avenge her brother’s murder...

The master of the comic caper is back with a new riotous tale of double identity. When Art Dodge falls in love with beautiful twins, he wants both all to himself. So, Art and Bart Dodge marry the girls, until he is exhausted and decides Bart has to go.

Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the Syndicate. And this was a delicate job — retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from a fresh grave. But Engel found only an empty coffin...

For 25 years, Burke Devore has provided for his family and played by the rules. Until now. Downsized from his job, Devore is slipping away: from his wife, his family, and from all civilized norms of behavior. He wants his life back, and will do anything to get it. In this relentlessly fascinating novel, the masterful Westlake takes readers on a journey of obsession and outrage inside a quiet man’s desperate world.

In Uganda in 1977, a particular trainload of coffee, mostly belonging to dictator Idi Amin, is worth six million dollars. As a group of scoundrels and international financiers hijack the train, the double and triple crosses pile up and the comic tension escalates in a brawling brew of buffoons, bumblers, beans and boxcars.

This 1981 Westlake gem is back in print. A mile-long freight train steams through the heart of Idi Amin’s mad, tortured, magical, and corrupt Uganda, loaded down with kahawa (Swahili for coffee). What Amin doesn't know, what his most beautiful spy has not been able to wring out of her latest victim, and what the world’s coffee markets may be unable to swallow, is that the train and six million dollars worth of coffee are about to disappear into the hands of a conflicted, colorful, swashbuckling band of mercenaries and moneymakers.