Chugga chugga, the plot moves on this honey. I liked how it reminded me of stories and scenes from my childhood, the 70s assassination atmosphere. Our protagonist is a funny (sorry) combo of sympathetic and not. Embarrassing cover but it does come straight from the text. ( )

This was my first book by Westlake. Most of his books are fun and light crime novels. This one was not. It was very good. really enjoyed it. I have since read a couple of his lighter Dortmunder crime novels. They are light and funny. Westlake has a great sense of humor. ( )

“The Comedy is Finished” is Westlake’s final masterpiece. It is an incredibly well-crafted tale that stitches together storylines about fame and fortune, kidnapping, the end of the sixties, and the loss of ideals. It is a stupendous work and it is a novel that thoroughly transcends the world of crime fiction. That being said, I must concede that the first time I tried reading it I found it dull and pointless. This one was clearly worth a second try.

It is the story of a man, a comedian, Koo Davis, well-known for his USO tours to Korea and Vietnam. He is a symbol of American patriotism and flag-waving and the like. His personal life, however, consists of numerous affairs with whatever blonde dancers accompanied his tours of duty, a female manager whose relationship with him was closer to him than that of his wife, who he rarely saw, and little connection to his sons as well, whose careers had carried them on different paths than his.
Davis runs into a bit of trouble when a group of ex- sixties radicals akin the Weatherman or Patty Hearst’s SLA decide to kidnap the symbol of All-American patriotism and hold him as a political prisoner, demanding the release of ten so-called political prisoners who they want flown to Algeria. Just as Davis’ life has wound down over the years, becoming an empty caricature of what it once was, these radicals in this post-Watergate late seventies world are a caricature of the free love/end war hippies of the sixties who had degenerated over time into nutty bands of anti-government radicals who repeated stock phrases and hated the capitalistic world, envisioning something, anything, better.
It is a story, not just a crime fiction tale, of the general moods of our society during the turbulent seventies as idealism crashed and burned and morphed into things that Sgt. Pepper would barely understand.

As mentioned previously, it can be, for some, a difficult novel to begin as it is wildly unlike most of what Hard Case Crime publishes. It is not hardboiled detective fiction. Nor does it have much in the way of a noir feel to it. Nevertheless, it is an excellent novel and truly worth a read.
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Because of its history this book reads as slightly dated. It was completed in the early 80s but put aside unpublished until 2012. The protagonist, a fictional comedian who is kidnapped by a group of political radicals, seems like a blend of Bob Hope and Jack Benny. The radical group is handicapped by the fact that each member has their own agenda while Koo Davis is trying only to survive his ordeal and the FBI agent in charge of the case is hoping that a successful conclusion will return him to Washington with his career back on track.

First Westlake I've read, but certainly not the last. ( )