Donald E. Westlake wrote crime books that were funny, light and intricate. Help I Am Being Held Prisoner (Hard Case Crime, £7.99) was first published in 1974. The protagonist is Harold Künt. (That umlaut, as you can imagine, is very, very important.) In reaction against his name, he’s become a serial prankster. After one of his jokes goes badly wrong, he ends up in prison. Here he falls in with the Tunnel Gang, a group of inmates who use a secret tunnel to escape into the nearby town. But they only go there for a few hours at a time before returning to prison to serve out their sentences.
Künt strolls around town, chats to locals, even falls in love, and then heads back to his cell. It’s a perfect life. But then the gang decides to rob the nearby bank and Künt is embroiled in the crazy scheme. Westlake piles on the jokes, but there’s a serious heart to the story: a hapless and essentially innocent man, forced to play a double-bluff game, holding both his fellow prisoners and the authorities at bay.
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