Don't Ask
Donald E. Westlake - Don't Ask
This time it is Tiny Bulcher who contacts Dortmunder and the others because of his newly-found distant cousin from a newly founded pseudo-slavic country asking for a not-so-new relic.
Two newly separated countries - Tservogia and Votskojek (presumably of the same scale as Latveria, Ruritania and Palombia) - want to enter the United Nations to take over the place vacated by now defunct nation (unnamed pseudo-Yugoslavia or -Chechoslovakia). And everything depends on single item, a sacred relic, a bone, the femur of a very obscure saint.
So Tsergovians hire Dortmunder and company to steal the bone. Something goes wrong as usual and Dortmunder is briefly captured. In the end the gang has to steal the bone more than once… But eventually Dortmunder has a bone to pick with Votskojekians and their American allies. He is only mad enough to want to get more than even…
(I also wonder what the Coast Guard thinks about Westlake's depiction of them as insular people afraid to come out of their island base to see the sinful New York City? And whether the method the burglars use to gain access to the island would really work (well, if it did, it probably doesn't any more)).
This time it is Tiny Bulcher who contacts Dortmunder and the others because of his newly-found distant cousin from a newly founded pseudo-slavic country asking for a not-so-new relic.
Two newly separated countries - Tservogia and Votskojek (presumably of the same scale as Latveria, Ruritania and Palombia) - want to enter the United Nations to take over the place vacated by now defunct nation (unnamed pseudo-Yugoslavia or -Chechoslovakia). And everything depends on single item, a sacred relic, a bone, the femur of a very obscure saint.
So Tsergovians hire Dortmunder and company to steal the bone. Something goes wrong as usual and Dortmunder is briefly captured. In the end the gang has to steal the bone more than once… But eventually Dortmunder has a bone to pick with Votskojekians and their American allies. He is only mad enough to want to get more than even…
(I also wonder what the Coast Guard thinks about Westlake's depiction of them as insular people afraid to come out of their island base to see the sinful New York City? And whether the method the burglars use to gain access to the island would really work (well, if it did, it probably doesn't any more)).