Taking a chance on books really pays off sometimes. I usually trawl through bargain bins for the occasional gem of a find, but failing that, I often end up buying a bunch of bargain books to put up in my bookmooch inventory. Sometimes though, when I look through the pile I’ve bought, I find one or two books that catch my interest, and I end up keeping them for myself. And sometimes, these obscure books I’ve never even seen or heard of before turn out to be good reads.
Tonight’s book is one of them. I got this book over a year ago (for P10!) and meant to list in on my bookmooch inventory, I happened to skim through the first few pages and changed my mind.
The Scared Stiff is by Judson Jack Carmichael, which I learned (from the cover) is one of the many pseudonyms of bestselling author Donald E. Westlake. That didn’t mean anything to me, though, as I haven’t read any of his other works, pseudonym or otherwise.
I thought this book was a crime thriller, which is why I took it down from my shelves to read for Halloween, but to my delight, it turned out to be a screwball comedy!
Barry Lee and his beautiful South American wife, Lola, are down in the dumps, having practically tried every moneymaking scheme in existence and still coming up nil. They have one asset left, but it’s their life insurance, meaning one of them has to die in order to claim it.
So Barry and Lola set out to commit the perfect scam. They decide to stage Barry’s death in Lola’s native Guerrara, a small country where “record-keeping is terrible and the police aren’t the most advanced in the world” and the coroner doesn’t need to see the corpse to declare a death.
The plan works perfectly — Barry has an accidental death in front of many witnesses, with a spectacular funeral and all. Barry then assumes the identity of one of Lola’s dead brothers, with matching birth certificate, driver’s license, and passport! All Barry has to do is wait it out until Lola has claimed the insurance money. Or so he thought.
Barry soon learns that dying is the easy part — it appears that Barry’s not dead enough for some people, as Lola’s money-grubbing thug cousins find out about the con and decide to kill Barry to get a share of the windfall. Plus, an insurance officer is sniffing around, aided by a local policeman with the hots for Lola!
Barry is on the run, only he isn’t Barry anymore; he assumes various identities to evade those who are hot on his trail. Barry impersonates a local taxi driver, an amorous truck driver, a Hollywood movie producer, a much-maligned husband, and many more in this comedy of errors about how far a person would go to get a little slice of the good life, and what a person would do in the name of love.
I have to say that I didn’t expect to enjoy this novel so much. It’s light, fast-paced and laugh-out-loud funny, and the characters are rambunctiously charming. but I must say it’s the candidness of Barry’s character that appealed to me the most. There’s something fresh and honest about his character (he narrates, by the way) that is just so likeable, especially in the opening chapter, when he lays down how their life got so messed up as they lived on the edge, living on whatever credit they could manage to scrape up, with the perilous joy of escaping bill collectors.
“The rackety life itself became our glamour, a desperate romantic struggle to remain true to our image of ourselves, like spies, more charming than those base creatures who could think about nothing but money.”
And then Barry talks about Lola, and he’s even more charming!
Someone calls him out, saying, “You aren’t the faithful type, actually, you’re a rogue… You’re unfaithful to the entire world, so why are you faithful to your wife?”
And he answers, “Maybe that’s why… Maybe I need one little island in a sea of untrustworthy water.”
And in another instance he says, “Lola and me, we were both one leg of the same pants. We weren’t any good to anybody until we got together.”
Call me cheesy, but I love it! Haha!
I had a lot of fun reading this lark of a novel — in fact, the only thing missing was a beach! — and I imagine the author had a lot of fun writing it as well. If any of Westlake’s other works are anything like this novel, I’m sold — sign me up for the next book!
***
The Scared Stiff, paperback, 4/5 stars
Book #148 for 2010
C for the A-Z Challenge
*Cover photo: jnichols on sxc.hu
[amazonify]::omakase::300:250[/amazonify]
Congratulations on a great find!
I’ve also been buying off Booksale for Bookmooch, and I chanced upon trade paperback copies of Jodi Picoult’s “Nineteen Minutes” and “The Pact” some weeks ago, intending to add them to my inventory. However, when I saw how many people have added them to their wishlists, I became curious about the books. I haven’t read either book yet, but I’ve already covered them in plastic and have decided to keep them for myself! :)
Monique, it’s so hard to part with books, even for mooching! :D