The Busy Body

By Donald E. Westlake

A mob boss's right-hand man must track down a missing cache of heroin .

The corpse isn't anybody special -- a low-level drug courier -- but it has been so long since the organization's last grand funeral that Nick Rovito decides to give the departed a big send-off. He pays for a huge church, a procession of Cadillacs, and an ocean of flowers, and enjoys the affair until he learns the dead man is going to his grave wearing the blue suit. Rovito summons Engel, his right-hand man, and tells him to get a shovel.

Inside the lining of the blue suit jacket is $250,000 worth of uncut heroin, smuggled back from Baltimore the day the courier died. When Engel's shovel strikes coffin, he braces himself for the encounter with the dead man. But the coffin is empty, the heroin gone, and Engel has no choice but to track down the missing body or face his boss's wrath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784088927

Donald E. Westlake

Donald E. Westlake has written numerous novels during the past 40 years, under his own name and various pseudonyms--most famously Richard Stark. He is generally regarded as the greatest writer of comic mystery of all time. Many of his books have been made into movies, including The Hunter which was filmed first as the noir classic with Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson, and then as Payback starring Mel Gibson. He has won three Edgar Allan Poe Awards, and has been named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Reviews for The Busy Body

[novak_13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good yarn in the Westlake tradition. The hardcover edition I managed to secure is nearly sixty years old yet still gave me a few chuckles and many signs of things to come. Well worth a read if you can still find a copy.