Rating: 
Summary: Winning Resurrection of Dortmunder as Grave Robber
Review: As a mystery writer with my initial novel in current release,I am quite pleased to see Donald Westlake bring back John Dortmunder following a five year break. No one writes comic caper books better than Mr. Westlake. After Dortmunder's first attempt at crime in this novel ends in a bungled burglary, Andy Kelp approaches Dortmunder with a unique offer. As part of a complicated scam to gain control of an Indian casino, Dortmunder is asked to remove a long dead body from a grave and replace it with the equally-dead ancestor of a woman fashioning herself as Little Feather. Fitzroy Guilderpost arranged this scam over the Internet, and the story takes wild and hilarious swings from there. BAD NEWS is a terric book, and I'm glad Donald Westlake resurrected his John Dortmunder to be a grave robber.
Rating:
Summary: Bad News is good news
Review: Death, taxes, and a "Dortmunder" novel from Donald Westlake -- they're all something you can count on (and the "Dortmunder" novel is a lot more fun than the other two).Another thing guaranteed is that nothing ever goes right for John Dortmunder, a simple, honest (well, sort of), hard-working thief who never gets an even break. As with all of Donald Westlake's novels about Dortmunder and his cohorts, just hang on because it is going to be a strange and funny ride. In previous books in the series, we have seen Dortmunder stealing jewels and paintings and banks (yes, "stealing" a bank, not robbing it), but never before has he had to steal a dead Indian. Of course, it is all in a good cause -- money. And rest assured, all will come out wrong in the end. Dead Indians, live Indians, Indian casinos, double-crossing con artists, small town lawyers, big city lawyers, coffins playing musical chairs ... No wonder John Dortmunder always looks so downcast. This one is money in the bank, folks. "Bad News" is good news for readers.
Rating:
Summary: The Old Switcheroo!
Review: Donald E. Westlake does a brilliant job here of using comedy to display the ironies of life in proving that Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong . . . will) is still in effect. John Dortmunder is well known to Westlake fans as the break-in specialist who constantly faces unexpected misfortune to foil his "can't-miss" plans. Never has Dortmunder had so many plans upset as in Bad News. This book is my second favorite in the series, after Bank Shot. The book's opening would make a great short story. Dortmunder is about to walk off with $1,000 worth of camera equipment from a discount store when every alarm and light in the place go off. Using his wits, he quickly improvises an alibi that will leave you chuckling for days. Having lost that $1,000, Dortmunder agrees to Andy Kelp's offer of a job digging up and moving a body from a nearby cemetery. Andy got the job over the Internet, and it turns out that John and Andy are viewed as expendable by their "employers" -- Fitzroy Guilderpost and Irwin Gabel. In the process of protecting themselves, John and Andy decide that they should try to cut themselves in on whatever the caper is really all about. Eventually, they become "partners" with the two, plus their accomplice, Ms. Shirley Ann Farraff, who operates under the nom de guerre of Little Feather Redcorn, the supposed last of the supposedly extinct Pottaknobbee tribe who have a potential one-third ownership of a Native-American casino on the reservation in upstate New York. They plan to pull an "Anastasia" and prove that Shirley Ann is a Pottaknobbee by burying one of her relatives in the grave of one Joseph Redcorn on Long Island. Dortmunder quickly spots lots of holes in the plan and tries to fix them. From the beginning almost everything goes wrong, with hilarious consequences. Like the fine comic writer that he is, Mr. Westlake invests all parts of the book with humor . . . not just the development of the crime story. There are lots of humorous examples of the ways that people outsmart themselves. Before you are done, you will have gone through so many switches of key elements of this story that you'll have run out of fingers and toes to count them on. And you'll love it! After you finish the book, think about a time when you tried to get something for nothing . . . and outsmarted yourself. How can you avoid repeating that error in the future? In my case, I remember spending 6 weeks working on a national contest while I was in high school. As I just about completed the contest entry, I realized that I had made a strategic error in my work process . . . and had no chance of winning. I would have made more money if I had worked for 25 cents an hour than I did with my nonexistent gains from working on that contest. I can avoid that problem by accurately assessing whether the likely gain is worth the effort before I start.
Rating: 
Summary: Good News! - A new Dortmunder
Review: Donald Westlake's latest Dortmunder book, _Bad News_, proved a sound choice for vacation reading. It's very fast moving, very funny, very clever, and very much a typical Dortmunder book, which is, dare I say, good news. As those who've read previous books in the series know, the most common trope of the Dortmunder books is for Dortmunder and his gang to get involved in a crime which ends up having to be, in some sense, repeated, with different permutations, several times. For example, in the very first one, _The Hot Rock_, they had to steal the same jewel several times. In this book, after the usual opening scene, John Dortmunder hilariously failing to get caught while failing to successfully complete a robbery, he finds himself approached by Andy Kelp with a unorthodox (for them) proposal. Andy has been hired by somebody he met on the Internet (Andy is always trying new technology, which Dortmunder hates) to help out in a certain enterprise -- they want them to dig up a grave and rebury a different body in it. This isn't much to Dortmunder's liking, but the price seems fateful -- exactly the amount of money he had expected to realize from the stolen goods he was forced to leave behind the previous night. After Andy and John complete the body switch, they foil the attempt by the villains Fitzroy and Irwin to cheat (permanently) their new helpers, and they get interested in a) figuring out what's really going on, and b) getting themselves a much bigger cut. With the help of Tiny Bulcher, they are soon involved in the scheme, which I won't detail here because finding out is much of the fun. Also involved are Little Feather, an Indian from out West, formerly a Las Vegas showgirl, and their target is an Indian-operated casino in Upstate New York. It's no surprise that the crooked casino owners have their own ideas, which involve several hilarious further iterations of the original "crime". It's all very funny stuff, and the various schemes are pretty much as clever as usual, though depending just a bit on sheer luck. Wholly worth reading, as indeed is the entire series. I'd put this particular entry somewhere in the middle range of the Dortmunder books, which means well in the upper range of books in general.
Rating:
Summary: Hooray! He's Back!
Review: How wonderful to have John Dortmunder back in action, and in a book that is absolutely up to par with his best adventures. And after five years without a new Dortmunder, it's fun to read one that feels current, with the Internet and cell phones as part of the story. The whole gang is back - May, Andy Kelp, Tiny Bulcher, Stan Murch and even Stan's cab-driving mom, once again pulling off her helpless little old lady routine with aplumb. This time they're forced to work with outsiders, and initially in the humiliating role of grave robbers after Dortmunder's latest caper, a mall camera-heist, goes sour. But John rightly doesn't trust his new employers, and he soon goes from "bozo" to partner, finding a way to weasel himself and Andy in on the action. The pace is fast, the plot twists inventive, and the writing smooth as ever. Even if you've never read Westlake, you'll jump right in, and the good news is you'll get a kick out of Bad News.
Rating:
Summary: Great News!!
Review: I am new to the Dortmunder series and I have been listening to several as books on tape (Don't Ask, The Hot Rock, Good Behavior, Bank Shot, Nobody's Perfect Jimmy the Kid) all in the last few months (as well as Put a Lid on it and The Axe) I had never heard of Dortmunder or Westlake and never read fiction. So as a novice to the genre I have to say that I find Mr. Westlake to be a remarkable communicator. His writing brings me into the action and I laugh out loud and feel the tension as if I was sitting there with the gang. I am hesitant to disagree with those more experienced reviewers when it come to this series but I found this book to be the best of the lot (understanding I think all of the are 5 Stars).....I think maybe because of the order I have been reading I was getting a little too comfortable with the Dortmunder formula and this one seems to take me just enough out of that formula to keep me going. I love Mr. Westlakes development of characters (although some of the Indian characters were his weakes) and the twists and turns that are his trademarks ( I also read The Axe and it was GREAT). I strongly encourage you to read this book or listen to it on tape...you will not be disappointed!! The only weak part for me was the regular guys at the bar scene that I so look forward to....but even that was good. Read this book and any of the others in the series...I am pressing on to try and finish all of the Dortmunders series in the next few months!!
Rating:
Summary: Dortmunder rules!
Review: Mr. Westlake seems to be a neverending source of new and great storylines featuring his famous hero - the robber and perfect planner John Dortmunder. "Bad News" is not an exception. Moreover, I must say that "Bad News" is the best Dortmunder novel so far. You will meet well-known Dortmunder's pals Andy Kelp, Stan Murch [with his mom] and Tiny Bulcher as well as several new [but created with the same detailed perfection] characters - captious organizer Fitzroy Guilderpost, ex-teacher Irwin Gabel and Indian casino showgirl Little Feather Redcorn. So, what to steal this time? Nothing more crazy than a corpse of a dead Indian of Pottaknobbee tribe. Why? To replace the body with Little Feather's dead great grandfather to take over a prosperous Indian casino by proving that Little Feather is a descendant of the last one of the Pottaknobbee which have a right to own one third of the whole casino. As a reader of Westlake's comic crime novels can suppose, the plan will fail on some particular reason but nothing like it can knock off a man like Dortmunder and there is always a way how to be a step before the opponents. Even in case you never read any Dortmunder book you can start with Bad News because the art of author's storytelling and sense of humor is so marvelous that you will go through the whole book at once without looking at the last page to see how many pages remain.
Rating:
Summary: Bad News Whodunit
Review: So where'd Redcorn's casket ever end up? Did Fitzroy ever take back possesion of the van Kelp had been moving from train parking lot to train parking lot?
Still a heckuva fun read. Reading (and rereading) the Dortmunders are like running into long lost friends.
Here's hoping Little Feather joins the gang in the next adventure!
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable Reading
Review: There are some things that are certainties: death, taxes, and on a lighter note, that a new book by Donald Westlake will be a good thing. In Bad News, the latest in his Dortmunder series, Westlake is as consistently great as always. In this novel, the hapless burglar is recruited into doing some grave robbing for a group of con artists. The con artists are certain that Dortmunder and his pal Kelp are just a couple of dumb crooks, but they are smart and pros...just very unlucky. Soon Dortmunder and his usual gang are involved in a scam to get part ownership in a successful Indian casino, taking them out of their usual field and into the new area of grifting. The irony that pervades this and the other Dortmunder novels is that Dortmunder winds up working harder as a thief and with less rewards than if he got a legitimate job. The idea of honest work, however, never even crosses his mind. In this book, once again, the simple jobs get ever more complicated and the payoffs are never as great as hoped. This is a fun book and a funny one, a fast and entertaining read. For those who like a good caper novel, this is a book to read, another delight from one of the masters.
Rating:
Summary: Dortmunder lives!
Review: There are very few writers who can sustain a humorous novel. It is a talent wildly under-appreciated until one seeks out those few examples of truly funny books: currently, David Lodge, last century, P.G. Wodehouse. A few others. And then there are the Dortmunder novels by Westlake, who takes the mystery genre and turns it into clever, lovable, hilarious adventures of these star-crossed robbers. This one, his most recent, returns to the level of his earlier ones, those memorable ones like the serial robberies in HOT ROCKS and "bank-robbing" taken too literally in BANK SHOT and the un-robbery of WHY ME? These are shamelessly shallow feel-good lovable entertainments: a rare accomplishment for any novelist in any period. This one, about DNA and Native Americans' casinos, is a splendid hoot.
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