Bruce Von Stiers

Donald E. Westlake is a writer of crime novels. Some of them feature John Dortmunder and his band of inept crooks. Others are about other comical criminal characters. This is the case in one of the latest books by Westlake. It features a thief named Meehan and hijinks related to the reelection of the President. The title of the book is Put A Lid On It. It was published by Warner Books.

Francis Xavier Meehan is a thief who was caught with the wrong thing at the wrong time. A heist he put together ends up bagging the wrong merchandise and lands him in federal court. But before he can go to trial he gets a visit from a man saying he is a lawyer needing Meehan’s help.

This man is not really a lawyer but does need help. It seems that there is someone who has something damaging to the President. The election is coming up soon and the Re-election committee doesn’t want this material to see the light of day. They get Meehan out of prison to steal the material and turn it over to them.

Jerrods is a man who makes Meehan a lot of promises. The first is that he will stay out of prison. The second is that his lawyer, Elaine Goldfarb, can be part of the whole process. Meehan doesn’t trust a lot of people, politicians and their like even less. So he wants to make sure that the promises made to him are kept.

The rest of the book details how Meehan recruits his help for the caper and lines it out. One guy doesn’t work out and Meehan has to go with another thief to help him. Seeing as this isn’t worth a whole lot by itself, Meehan is also going to steal other things during the theft of the damaging material. These additional things are a monster gun collection. Meehan and company will have a fun time performing the heist and then getting away with it.

Throw in some unsavory foreign characters, shady crooks and even shadier political hacks and you have a well rounded comical crime novel.

Put A Lid On It is a crime farce that is not to be missed. It has danger, excitement (a little) and a whole bunch of comical criminal activity. Put A Lid On It shows just how great Donald E. Westlake is at writing a funny crime novel. The premise for the novel is a little too much, but look at Watergate and some of the other Presidential skullduggery of the recent and distant past. Then the idea behind Put A Lid On It might not seem so far fetched.