“You don’t get off the hook that easily…” A turn of the century standalone thriller from Mr Westlake, suddenly referencing email and Amazon. Chapter 1 presents you with a setup not a million miles away from Ira Levin’s ‘Deathtrap’. Smirking, you say to yourself, ‘that’s rather neat, lets see where this goes’. Except that's *not* the hook. Oh no. In the last line of the chapter Westlake suddenly puts an Ace down on the table and off we go. It initially feels a bit like a prose version of some US Thriller Of The Week, the bit in ‘Columbo’ before Columbo turns up, peppered with lots of sharp observations about the nature of novel writing and publishing. But then, as the pot gets stirred, it starts playing with identity and issues of conscience, winding up in ‘Tales Of The Unexpected’ territory. I dislike the idea of “palate cleansers” but “The Hook” is a very nice little chamber piece from a writer who really knows his craft.
