The Fugitive Pigeon

Donald E. Westlake

May 2018 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

This “high comedy of errors [and] murder” with a cat-and-mouse plot is “real fun on the run” from the Edgar Award–winning Grand Master of Mystery (Kirkus Reviews).
 
Charlie Poole is a bum. His friends know it. His gangster uncle Al knows it. And Charlie himself knows it better than anyone. He’s stuck with his meager lot, tending bar at his uncle’s Brooklyn dive, picking up the occasional package . . . and being a bum.
 
But when two mob hit men show up out of the blue and inform him that his breathing days are over, Charlie doesn’t feel like a bum anymore. He feels like an extremely fast runner. Because not having much of a life is still way better than not having any life at all.
 
Now, the hapless Charlie is on the lam with a pair of heavies on his tail. And over the next few days, he stumbles into a murder he gets blamed for, meets a gorgeous gal he could fall for, discovers what he’s willing to fight for—and finds out just why the hell anyone would want to kill a bum like him . . .
 
Praise for Donald E. Westlake
“Westlake has no peer in the realm of comic mystery novelists.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“No writer can excel Donald E. Westlake.” —Los Angeles Times
 

About the author

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) was one of the most prolific and talented authors of American crime fiction. He began his career in the late 1950s, churning out novels for pulp houses—often writing as many as four novels a year under various pseudonyms—but soon began publishing under his own name. His most well-known characters were John Dortmunder, an unlucky thief, and a ruthless criminal named Parker. His writing earned him three Edgars and a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
 
Westlake’s cinematic prose and brisk dialogue made his novels attractive to Hollywood, and several motion pictures were made from his books, with stars such as Lee Marvin and Mel Gibson. Westlake wrote several screenplays himself, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of The Grifters, Jim Thompson’s noir classic.