The Hook

What a good book this is! Westlake uses what must, by now, be a voluminous knowledge of the book publishing industry to put together an ingenious set up: best-selling author Bryce Proctorr, in the midst of a nasty divorce, has hit a blank wall creatively and the pressure is on, since his new book is months overdue. Proctorr runs into an old friend, writer Wayne Prentice, at the library one day and hears Wayne's tale of woe: in the new publishing environment, the computer and sales figures rule everything--a midlist author can't hope to make it anymore if his sales continue to decline. Eventually, a new book by that author, no matter how talented, will meet with indifference by a publisher. To combat this, Prentice has been writing books under a pseudonym, "Tim Fleet," but now Fleet's sales figures have become caught in that same downward spiral.Proctorr, whose deadline is looming, hatches a plan: he will take Prentice's new book, which will never find a willing publisher, make minor changes to names and incidents, and hand it in as his own, splitting the $500,000 advance. There's only one condition: Wayne must kill Proctorr's ex-wife, Lucie.Events proceed from there and nothing works out quite the way we might expect. Along the way, there's a lot of rumination about the state of publishing and writing today--if you're an aspiring writer, this might not be the best book to read (it doesn't exactly paint a rosy picture of your chances of being published). And it all moves relentlessly to an extremely chilling and understated conclusion. Westlake is an excellent writer and he continues to turn out amazing work. This book is highly recommended!

If he were alive today, Mr. Hitchcock would be proud. "The Hook," reminiscent of "Strangers on a Train," is a powerhouse in a small package. Only 280 pages, this book packs such a wallop it doesn't need to be any more wordy. With only a small handful of characters, each finely drawn, Mr. Westlake keeps things simple very effectively, without having to resort to an overly populated cast. The story starts out as a simple case of quid pro quo. Two writers meet: successful Bryce Proctorr, whose story-telling well has dried up, and the less well-known Wayne Prentice, able to write but not able to sell. They strike a bargain. Proctorr will publish Prentice's latest book under his own name and split the $1 million advance 50/50. But Proctorr has a hook: "My wife must be dead." Unlike other books of this sort, Westlake takes us to places in the human mind we would rather not go, places rife with psychological landmines. We watch in horror as the two writers' lives slowly become one. The shocking ending is quite startling and unexpected, yet not entirely surprising. I didn't seriously believe the author would go there ... but he did.

How often do you find yourself chuckling at the end of each chapter in a suspence novel? It may have been for tension relief, or even accidental, but it was there.Early in the novel I saw shades of "Sacred Monster". As it turns out, I was not far off. Donald Westlake did an exceptional job of bringing the reader right where he wanted him at each step of the novel.Again, I don't know if it was intentional of not, but the last chapter writes itself. It is as if Donald Westlake is Wayne, helping us to finish what he began.Seldom have I read a novel as riveting as this one. As much as I enjoy his humor, such as the Dortmunder series, no one else does suspence as well as he can.

It must be over twenty years since authors Bryce Proctorr and Wayne Prentice first met. When they were both aspiring and promising they hit the same haunts, but that was years. Their careers took off in different directions with Proctorr being one of the giants and receiving millions per book while Prentice has faded into the inkwell of nothingness using pen names to hide his dismal selling record. Sales are everything and the computer maintains the history whether it is dismal or not. Now coincidentally, they run into each other doing library research. Suffering from writer's block, which he blames on his ugly divorce, Bryce offers a lucrative deal to Wayne. Wayne writes the book using Bryce's name instead of Tim Fleet or some other alias and they split the multi-million dollar pot. However, Bryce adds one condition, namely that his ex-wife Lucie must die. Like his previous novel THE AX, Donald Westlake HOOKS his audience from the start and never lets go until the novel is finished. The psychological suspense story line leaves Wayne stunned and questioning the Faustian deal he accepted. The two writers turn the tale into an exciting novel that will leave readers wanting Mr. Westlake to publish his next book much faster than the three-year gap between this story and his preceding work.Harriet Klausner