Flickering Capers – Donald Westlake on Film

Donald Westlake was one of the most prolific and profound writers of crime fiction in the twentieth century, and a new book by Andy Rohmer provides a comprehensive, highly readable and very entertaining overview of Westlake’s literary and cinematic career. With Flickering Capers – Donald Westlake on Film, author Andy Rohmer looks at every Westlake novel that was adapted into film, comparing the book to its cinematic adaptation. Many of these films will be familiar to both casual and hardcore cineastes. I’m guessing most readers will have seen the delightful Robert Redford caper The Hot Rock, or at least one of the films in Westlake’s iconic Parker series. But how many of you knew that there were also French, German, Italian, Indian and Iranian film adaptations of Westlake’s work? Rohmer takes a scalpel to them one by one, surgically removing the good, the bad and the ugly in each film. Westlake had a lucrative side-hustle as a screenwriter. Rohmer looks at every film based on a Westlake screenplay.

I don’t always agree with Rohmer’s conclusions. He was a bit harsh on The Outfit, I thought. But I was always enthralled by his lucid, witty and insightful analysis. Of the over-the-top plot of Bank Shot, Rohmer opines that ‘Westlake probably pierced his tongue with his tongue writing this novel’. It helps with the cogent analysis that Andy Rohmer is the pen name of Eduardo Ramos, an esteemed Portuguese diplomat well-used to defusing tense international incidents. In terms of film criticism, Rohmer/Ramos takes his cue from the Cahiers du Cinéma school. Flickering Capers is the second volume in Rohmer’s Writers-On-Film series. I enjoyed the first volume immensely, Paperback Celluloid: Elmore Leonard on Film, but Flickering Capers is even better. Rohmer has really found his groove with the series and I look forward to future volumes immensely. In the meantime, treat yourself to a copy of Flickering Capers.

Flickering Capers – Donald Westlake on Film is available to buy on Amazon.