Get Real

I just read Get Real, Donald Westlake's final Dortmunder novel. I've never been a fan of the Dortmunder books: I prefer the Parker books, and of his comic novels my favorite is The Spy in the Ointment. In Get Real, too, I find the satire of "reality" show production (which is portrayed here as virtually 100% staged) funnier than Dortmunder and his gang. One thing I realized, though, is that Westlake is a good writer at the sentence level. His style isn't flashy, so it's easy to overlook this; but his descriptions are crisp, vivid and sharply observed, and free of flowery language and cliches.