Tempted to find a highly valuable, seven-hundred-pound chess set, hapless crook John Dortmunder musters his merry band of fellow ne'er-do-wells on a haphazard treasure hunt that prompts his investigation of Russia's last czar.

A hapless thief is drafted by a gang of nuns in need, in a novel by an Edgar Award winner who “has no peer in the realm of comic mystery novelists” (San Francisco Chronicle).
 It was supposed to be a simple caviar heist. Dortmunder is almost in the building when the alarm sounds, forcing him up the fire escape and onto the roof. He leaps onto the next building, smashing his ankle and landing in the den of the worst...

A kidnapping plan cribbed from a crime novel goes hilariously wrong for gang boss John Dortmunder—from the Edgar Award–winning author of Bank Shot.
 
When his “friend” Andy Kelp has a plan, career criminal John Dortmunder knows that means trouble. Kelp’s schemes, no matter how well intentioned, tend to spiral quickly out of control. But this one, Kelp swears, is airtight. He read it in a...

A crew of thieves hopes to hijack a mobile home full of money in this crime caper from “the funniest man in the world” (The Washington Post).
John Dortmunder has been working an encyclopedia-selling scam while waiting for his next big heist. Unfortunately, his latest mark seems to be wise to the con, and he has to cut his sales pitch short and make a quick escape.
 
But opportunity awaits: Main Street...

In his classic caper novels, Donald E. Westlake turns the world of crime and criminals upside-down: the bad get better, the good get worse, and God save anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and his most improbable plans.

It's a long way from the island of Manhattan to the island resort where Preston Fareweather has his hedonistic hideout-avoiding the legal prosecutions of five embittered ex-wives and enjoying the attentions...

This rollicking tale of an aging robber who wants to blow up a reservoir “will keep readers laughing” (Publishers Weekly).
In his day, Tom was a hard man. He came up with Dillinger in the 1930s, and pulled a lot of high-profile jobs before the state put him away. They meant it to be for good, but after twenty-three years the prisons are too crowded for seventy-year-old bank robbers, and so they let the old man go. Finally...

An inside-job art heist goes awry in this “wildly funny” crime novel by the Edgar Award–winning author (The New York Times Book Review).
  It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention...

Critically acclaimed for his recent bestseller, "The Ax, " Westlake returns with a tale of twisted psychological suspense involving two cunning authors—and one deadly proposition.

A South American dictator conceals millions of dollars worth of valuables in a dismantled castle being flown to Paris and a quickly assembled, international gang of thieves--each with national eccentricities--set out to steal the entire castle

"Francis Xavier Meehan (Meehan to his friends, "Halt!" to the cops) has ten thousand rules to live by, but only one way to make a living: stealing. Then a man in a checked jacket from Washington comes to meet Meehan in the Manhattan Correctional Center with an offer Meehan cannot refuse.". "For somewhere out there is an October Surprise that may dethrone the sitting president of the United States. The Washington man wants Meehan to steal the incriminating...