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JAMESBJOHNSON
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LEVINE by Donald Westlake
LEVINE is a collection of long short stories Westlake published in the ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE from the 60s till 1984.
Abe Levine is a 53 year old NYPD detective with a bad heart who gets all the weird cases to investigate. And theyre pretty strange capers. All of the stories play the mystery element till the last page. Westlake knew how to use mystery to keep folks reading.
The writing is very different from Westlake's usual laconic style. He never met an adverb he liked, and he wasn't crazy for proper nouns. Many of his characters have no first names. But this collection is lush with details, in the 2nd story I felt vertigo up on the window ledge with Levine and the jumper he was trying to save. A character like Parker would push the sissy off the ledge then go fuck the man's wife, Levine absorbs all the stress into his bad ticker and suffers more than the jumper. Its effective writing but not popular entertainment.
My favorite tale is the last one, AFTER I'M GONE. In it an old mobster appeals to Levine for help to betray the boss of the mob. The boss murdered the old guys son after Junior fucked the boss's young wife and got caught in the saddle. It ends with a gunfight at the OK Corral. Abe Levine is in the middle of it, tween the cops and the mob shooters.
Westlake's other genius is, his stories don't end well for the characters. An anvil always falls outta the blue atop them. God is always a double-crosser.
LEVINE is a collection of long short stories Westlake published in the ALFRED HITCHCOCK MYSTERY MAGAZINE from the 60s till 1984.
Abe Levine is a 53 year old NYPD detective with a bad heart who gets all the weird cases to investigate. And theyre pretty strange capers. All of the stories play the mystery element till the last page. Westlake knew how to use mystery to keep folks reading.
The writing is very different from Westlake's usual laconic style. He never met an adverb he liked, and he wasn't crazy for proper nouns. Many of his characters have no first names. But this collection is lush with details, in the 2nd story I felt vertigo up on the window ledge with Levine and the jumper he was trying to save. A character like Parker would push the sissy off the ledge then go fuck the man's wife, Levine absorbs all the stress into his bad ticker and suffers more than the jumper. Its effective writing but not popular entertainment.
My favorite tale is the last one, AFTER I'M GONE. In it an old mobster appeals to Levine for help to betray the boss of the mob. The boss murdered the old guys son after Junior fucked the boss's young wife and got caught in the saddle. It ends with a gunfight at the OK Corral. Abe Levine is in the middle of it, tween the cops and the mob shooters.
Westlake's other genius is, his stories don't end well for the characters. An anvil always falls outta the blue atop them. God is always a double-crosser.
