Donald Westlake’s style adapts especially well to audio. It’s not hard-boiled, but it’s spare and filled with evocative description. This book is one of his earliest works and was rejected by a publisher as “too literary.” The story follows a man who is beaten by the husband of his paramour and loses his memory. The listener never knows or learns anything the main character doesn’t. This engaging device carries one along. The story is a mystery in the sense that the listener doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s no real crime to solve. Stephen Thorne is solid as the narrator, effectively portraying the weariness and puzzlement of the main character. He doesn’t give each character a distinctive voice but differentiates each with slight changes in tone and pacing. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

The career of late MWA Grand Master Westlake (1933–2009) spans 50 years with the appearance of this elegant, melancholy novel, written in the 1960s and never before published. Actor Paul Cole is on tour when he sleeps with the wrong married woman, and her husband puts him in the hospital, from which he emerges with short- and long-term memory problems. As he makes his way from the Midwest to his home in New York City, Paul struggles to remember his past and build a future while existing in limbo: unable to keep appointments with doctors or the unemployment office, meeting countless people too caught up in their own agendas or bureaucracies to help him. Lovely language and the overall discourse on the consequences of thoughtlessness make this a significant final work from a master. (Apr.)

Although acclaimed crime novelist Westlake died a year ago, he was so prolific that new work continues to emerge. This title, purportedly written in the 1960s (when a 15-day hospital stay cost less than $500), follows actor Paul Cole after a fight leaves him with a severe case of amnesia. Nearly broke and abandoned by his tour company in a small Midwestern town, he struggles to resume life—a near impossibility since he can remember no details about his former existence. Writing more a psychological study than a mystery, Westlake painstakingly plots Cole's progress as he tries desperately to discover and then return to his former life, drawing on only the few meager clues that the items in his suitcase provide. VERDICT The three-time Edgar winner and Mystery Writers of America Grand Master left a huge body of work as well as a devoted following. Noir fans will be eager to jump on this "found" work even though it's different from much of his later more comedic work. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 12/09.]—Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR