Fictional criminal created by Donald E. Westlake
Fictional character

John Archibald Dortmunder is a fictional character created by Donald E. Westlake. He is the protagonist of 14 novels and 11 short stories published between 1970 and 2009. He first appeared in the novel The Hot Rock, published in 1970.

Westlake originally intended The Hot Rock to feature his Parker character and to publish it under his Richard Stark pseudonym. However, the plot involves a precious gem that is stolen, lost, reacquired, stolen again, lost again (and so forth), which seemed too comical a situation for a hard-boiled creation like Parker. Westlake therefore rewrote the novel with a more bumbling and likable cast of characters, led by a pessimistic, hard-luck, professional thief. A neon sign for DAB beer, an acronym for "Dortmunder Actien Brauerei", provided the name for the book's new protagonist.

A career criminal and a "planner," creating schemes for burglaries and assigning responsibilities to his team, Dortmunder is similar to Parker in several ways.

He is tall, with stooped shoulders and "lifeless thinning hair-colored hair" and has a disreputable "hangdog" face; he rarely smiles. He shares an apartment in Manhattan on East 19th Street with longtime girlfriend May Bellamy, a supermarket cashier. Unlike Parker, however, Dortmunder is a nonviolent character whose schemes start out to be fairly straightforward but usually turn out to be outlandish and over-the-top.

Character background

Very little is known of Dortmunder's childhood.It is mentioned in more than one book that he was abandoned at birth and raised in an orphanage run by the Bleeding Heart Sisters of Eternal Misery in the fictional town of Dead Indian, Illinois.

Dortmunder married a nightclub entertainer whose stage name was "Honeybun Bazoom" shortly before he left the country to serve in Korea in 1952. The marriage took place in San Diego. Upon his return from Korea, they were divorced in Reno in 1954.

Dortmunder has been twice convicted of burglary, serving time in prison. He is completing the final day of his second prison term at the very beginning of The Hot Rock. Always hanging over Dortmunder's head is the knowledge that a third conviction will mean that he will be sent to prison for the rest of his life with no chance of parole.

The fact that something almost always goes wrong with Dortmunder's jobs, in spite of careful planning, has given him the reputation of being jinxed. Although he claims not to be superstitious, Dortmunder has believed so, too. In fact, Dortmunder gets worried when things go smoothly and seems relieved when something does go wrong. In most novels, Dortmunder's team earn only small amounts of money; the resulting heists, therefore, are only Pyrrhic victories, and the moral for the reader is that Crime Does Not Pay—at least not very well. However, Dortmunder is not always unlucky, and in some novels and stories he and his crew make out quite well.

Dortmunder has occasionally used the alias "John Diddums", telling anyone who asks that it is Welsh (to which they usually reply "Ah" or "Oh"). He came up with the name on the spur of the moment in the 1989 short story "Too Many Crooks" and dislikes it, but now uses it involuntarily in circumstances that preclude using his real name.

The motto of his family crest (which he admits he stole) is "Quid lucrum istic mihi est?" ("What's in it for me?").

A firm believer that "if you couldn't accomplish a task with five men, you shouldn't try it at all" (What's The Worst That Could Happen?), Dortmunder as a rule never works with more than four other people. However, in What's The Worst That Could Happen?, a job in Las Vegas (robbing a Las Vegas Strip hotel/casino) is so irresistible to other associates that he winds up with a total "crew" of twenty people.

As is common with characters in long-running series, Dortmunder and his companions seem to be more-or-less frozen at the age they were when we first met them. His age is given as 37 in 1970's The Hot Rock, and as 40 in 1977's Nobody's Perfect. Dortmunder appears to be somewhere in his early forties throughout the rest of the series' nearly forty-year run.

Associates

Except in a few short stories, where Dortmunder is working alone, each of Dortmunder's plans calls for a team or "string". Seen most frequently are:

Kelp and Murch are the only regulars to appear in every novel. Kelp also appears in many of the short stories. Over the course of the series, several other regulars are gradually added to the mix, including:

Several other specialists appear less frequently in the series, such as Ralph Winslow, a lockman; Wally Whistler, an extremely absentminded lockman who once accidentally released a lion from its cage at the zoo; Jim O'Hara, a recently released burglar who still hasn't lost his prison pallor, and Herman Jones, a black lockman formerly known as "Herman X" when he was a black radical and as "Herman Makanene Stulu'mbnick" when he was briefly Vice-President of the fictional African nation of Talabwo. Other memorable characters include Wilbur Howey, a lockman recently released after a forty-eight-year sentence—originally ten years, but he kept escaping and getting caught immediately; Roger Chefwick, a lockman who is crazy about model trains; and Fred and Thelma Lartz, a husband-wife driving team. Thelma now does the actual driving because Fred has lost his nerve after nearly being run down by an Eastern Airlines flight on a Kennedy Airport runway.

Also of note are the various wives, girlfriends and female family members of the regulars, who often find their way into the plots. These regulars are sometimes employed directly in the gang's criminal enterprises, sometimeso they are not. But they are all seen frequently, and could certainly be accused of aiding and abetting Dortmunder and his cronies in all their endeavors:

When planning their heists, the group usually meets in the back room of the O.J. Bar and Grill, at a circular table, Whoever gets there first gets the chair facing the door: Tiny is the only one who doesn't mind sitting with his back to the door. At these meetings, Andy and Dortmunder drink Amsterdam Liquor Store Bourbon, labeled "Our Own Brand", over ice. Murch drinks beer and salt due to his status as a driver. He prefers to nurse one beer, and the salt restores the head on it. Ralph Winslow drinks rye and water with many ice-cubes, which he keeps clinking. Tiny drinks a tincture of red wine and vodka, described as looking like "flat cherry soda". Scenes set in the public areas of the O.J. usually involve the unnamed regulars at the bar, who provide comic relief by engaging in heated arguments on various topics of which they are ignorant.

Significant items stolen by Dortmunder

Successful robberies committed by Dortmunder and his crew

Appearances

Novels

All of the above novels have been recorded as either abridged or unabridged audio-books.

Shorter Works

Films

Radio

In popular culture