Help I Am Being Held Prisoner
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
JAILED FOR A JOKE
It isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters - so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates' plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it's too late; he's in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose...
HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
MWA Grand Master Westlake (1933 2008) is good even when he's not at his best, as shown by this reissue of a 1974 heist caper. Harry K nt is an inveterate practical joker, but when one of his jokes leaving a nude female mannequin sprawled on the hood of a car parked on the verge of the Long Island Expressway results in a 17-car collision and 20 injured, he's given a sentence of five to 15 years in the state pen. In the prison gym, Harry meets a disgruntled crew of seven inmates, led by Phil Giffin, who share a secret tunnel that allows them to visit the outside world. The real fun begins when Harry learns that Phil's group is planning to rob two banks, and Harry is expected to help. Poor Harry tries, secretly, to thwart the bank job; participates in a wacky robbery of Camp Quattatunk, an army base; is almost undone by another practical joker; and survives prison as only Westlake, master of the absurd, could devise. Fans both old and new will be tickled.