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The hunt is on for a valuable statue in this comic crime thriller from "the funniest man in the world" (The Washington Post). A small South American republic has decided to capitalize on its national symbol: a prized gold statue of a dancing Aztec priest. The president asks a sculptor to make sixteen copies of it for sale abroad. The sculptor replaces the original with one of his fakes, and ships the real one to New York City for an under-the-table sale to a museum. The statues travel to America spread out among five crates, labeled to ensure that delivery goes as planned. But it doesn't work. Asked to pick up the crate marked "E" at the airport, delivery man Jerry Manelli, confused by his client's Spanish accent, takes crate "A" instead. The statue disappears into the city, leading him on a baffling chase, which--if he comes up with the wrong Aztec--could cost him his life.… (more)
User reviews
This book (aka A New York Dance) is one of Westlake's finest comic crime capers, quite worthy of comparison with the Dortmunder canon. Jerry Manelli has a little moving business out at JFK airport, moving things from here to there without necessarily getting the
Everybody's looking for a good book, and once in a while, somebody finds one.
The plot is both simple
That's the simple part. It gets complicated because so many different characters have statues and a gradually increasing number of people, both mobsters and ordinary joes, are trying to find the valuable one. If you have seen "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," you will have an idea of what this story is like, except that Westlake's version is a lot more fun. Somehow he manages to make each of these many greedy characters unique, each one with his or her own story and personality. There's the idiotic college professor. There's the swimming pool salesman who sleeps with other men's wives but loves his mom best. And so on. Following the action, and there is plenty of action, is not nearly as difficult for the reader as it might seem.
The novel seems a bit dated now, not so much because of technological change as social change. No reputable publisher would be likely to accept some of the slurs directed at blacks and homosexuals, not all of which are character-driven. If one can forgive that as a product of the times, "Dancing Aztecs" stands as one of the funniest novels you are likely to read.