BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS.The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People's Revolutionary Army, who've decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life...The final, previously unpublished novel from the legendary Donald Westlake!

To find a gay man's killer, Mitch Tobin looks to the starsDisgraced ex-cop Mitch Tobin is digging in his basement when he meets Ronald Cornell. A gay man from downtown Brooklyn whose partner was recently murdered, Cornell wants Tobin's assistance in an investigation that the NYPD has declared hopeless. Tobin sympathizes—he once lost a partner of his own, a fellow cop whose death he was partially responsible for—and asks how he can help. Cornell has a list of six suspects, and all he needs to know about them is where they were born and at what time, so he can make their star charts. Tobin has just met the world's first astrological detective.He tries to keep out of Cornell's harebrained investigation, but the cosmos has other plans. Whoever murdered Cornell's lover is not through with killing, and Tobin must delve deep into the lives a group of friends even more marginalized than he is in order to keep this hapless astrologer from coming to harm.

It started with a ring. A cheap ring. The yellow metal said brass, not gold, and the sparkly bits were certainly not diamonds. But the ring belonged to May's horse-playing uncle, who swore it brought good luck. Dortmunder, who wouldn't kick a little good luck out of bed, puts it to the test when he goes to burglarize Long Island billionaire Max Fairbanks. As luck would have it, Dortmunder is greeted by Fairbanks himself--and a loaded gun--as soon as he strolls through the door. When the cops arrive, the mogul adds insult to injury by claiming that Dortmunder's lucky ring is actually his. Big mistake, big guy. As soon as Dortmunder can give the cops the slip, the world's most single-minded burglar goes after the fat cat with a vengeance and a team of crooks that only he can assemble. And from the get-go everything will go Dortmunder's way--everything that is, except the ring. Plowing through Fairbanks's many residences, from New York's Great White Way to Washington's Watergate Hot...

SOMETIMES WINNING FEELS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE LOSING. 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…From BooklistChet Conway, a New York City cabbie who calls himself eloquent, likes his job and can afford to be philosophical about tips—that is, until one passenger gives him a gratuity that may cost him his life. This tip isn’t spare change but inside dope on a long-shot horse. Chet, who likes both stud poker and horse racing, places a bet on the cuff, and the nag comes in big. But when he goes to collect, his bookie is bleeding. Even worse, everyone—from the bookie’s wife and sister, to the cops, to two warring gangs—thinks Chet pulled the trigger. All he wants is his cash, but he looks likely to be paid in lead. This 1969 comic caper may have fallen out of print, but it’s so agreeably engaging that it suggests that Westlake has never had a bad day at work. Chet’s doggedness in the face of absurd complications keeps us smiling along in the backseat. And, even as Westlake kids the conventions of mystery, the neatly knotted plot proves that he takes even fun seriously. --Keir Graff About the AuthorDonald E. Westlake is widely regarded as one of the great crime writers of the 20th Century. He won three Edgar Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America  Many of his books have been made into movies; Westlake also wrote the screenplay for The Grifters,for which he received an Academy Award nomination.

For the sake of a distant cousin, Mitch Tobin takes on an impossible caseOn the outskirts of Greenwich Village, among a wasteland of warehouses and tenements, a group of young people are opening a coffee shop. They are idealistic, giddy, and beautiful—the picture of 1960s youth—but their optimism cannot last. When a corrupt detective comes around demanding regular bribes, one of the young hippies, Robin Kennely, asks for help from a distant relative, the honest but fallen former cop Mitchell Tobin. When Tobin visits the coffee shop for the first time, he finds Robin in a state of shock, clutching a knife and covered in blood. Two corpses lie upstairs. It seems impossible that anyone but Robin could have killed them, but for the sake of a group of children whose lives are so much brighter than his own, Tobin attempts to prove otherwise.

Working night security at a museum, Mitch Tobin finds a dead man in his birthday suitWhen he first met Linda Campbell, Mitchell Tobin was nothing more to her than the man who had put her husband in jail. It took over a year for them to begin their affair, but once it started, it became intense—lasting right up to the day when Tobin shirked duty to see her, and his partner got killed as a result. Years later, on a penny-ante night security job, Tobin is doing his rounds when Linda comes to ask a favor. Out of prison and hoping to go straight, her husband is having trouble escaping his old cronies. Tobin has just agreed to try to help when they come upon a corpse, lying naked on the floor.If he's to do anything for Linda, Tobin will have to keep clear of the murder investigation. But as her husband knew all too well, it takes much more than self-discipline to put a checkered past behind you.