Jailed for a Joke
It isn’t easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians’ careers in tatters—so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he’s just trying to keep a low profile in the Big House. He wants no part of his fellow inmates’ plan to use an escape tunnel to rob two banks. But it’s too late; he’s in it up to his neck. And that neck may just wind up in a noose…
HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER is Donald E. Westlake at his funniest and his most ingenious, a rediscovered crime classic from the MWA Grand Master returning to stores for the first time in three decades.
Our protagonist is Harry Künt (with an umlaut, as he’ll be sure to tell you), an inveterate practical joker. He has been tortured his whole life by his name, which everyone mispronounces but which he won’t change because that would break his oblivious mother’s heart. His practical jokes are his way of lashing out at the world about his constant humiliation. He’s good at them, too, never getting caught. Until, of course, one day he does and ends up in jail because of it.
Once in prison, he is assigned a privileged work-duty slot in the prison’s gym, where the other prisoners with gym duty let him in on their little secret–when the gym was built, a secret passage into town was also built. This lucky crew can visit the outside world regularly.
But once they trust him with that secret, they let him in on another–they are planning on robbing two banks in town. Why not? They have the perfect alibi!
This completely terrifies Harry. He is not a hardened criminal, just a helpless sap who ended up in prison. If he tells anyone, it will go badly for him. If he doesn’t tell anyone, he is probably participating and at minimum an accomplice in a bank robbery. What will he do?
Help I Am Being Held Prisoner is a deceptively complex book in a breezy comic crime wrapper, and I can’t write too much more about it without spoiling things I don’t want to spoil. One theme, that the reader will notice right away, is that of agency. Harry is never in control of his own situation, to the point where he accidentally ends up in a situation where he may have to rob a bank. There are other important themes wrapped in and around that one, and the reader tracks their development as he tracks the planning for the robbery and other events. By its end, Help I Am Being Held Prisoner has more of an impact than one would expect in such a seemingly light-hearted affair.
Help I Am Being Held Prisoner never should have gone out of print, and it’s terrific that Hard Case Crime has brought it back. Not to be missed.
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Such a great thing, to finally have this back in print. Hard Case Crime deserves many thanks for making this happen (and Brothers Keepers next, arguably an even better book than this).
Since it falls under the general heading of the ‘Nephew’ books, a lineage that begins with The Fugitive Pigeon, it makes sense that Harry is trapped in circumstances not of his making (though he did commit a crime, of sorts, that got him locked up in the first place).
You’re right, though–he’s unusually at the mercy of events, even by the standards of the Westlake Nephews. It’s what he makes of the twists and turns of fate, how he rolls with the punches of the plot, balances himself between the forces of law and order, either of which might destroy him, that distinguishes him as a character, Fortune’s Fool. More passive than many other Westlake protagonists, but by no means a complete sap. He makes the best of the opportunities that come his way. A really great girl not least among them.
Fred: This one was written in a bit of a hurry, and it shows. I should have been more clear that, yes, at a certain point Harry begins asserting agency, which helps to propel the final stages of the novel. This roughly coincides with him meeting Marian. A good woman can do wonders for a man.
There was more I wanted to discuss in this one, but I didn’t think I could without giving too much away. I may do a spoilers-laden look at it whenever I get around to re-reading it.
(In your posts on this book you discuss and show misleading covers–how about Marian on this cover! A gun?)
I actually discussed this cover with Charles Ardai a while back, and he loved it, and the artist was given the usual license. Hard Case has a certain defined niche, which doesn’t really include a lot of comedies, so I guess they wanted to emphasize that this is a crime novel, there are guns, and there is sex in it. (With a blonde, but at least the artist went with curvy–maybe that’s his girlfriend, how would I know?)
Most covers I’ve seen emphasize the practical joke angle, but the Italians went a different way–one I particularly liked deals with the sequence at Camp Quattatunk, and features not Harry, but Eddie Troyn, excuse me, I meant Captain Robinson SIR!
I can never fault Hard Case for cover art, since they actually go to the trouble of commissioning it. And all that really matters is that people can read this one again, without searching for a used copy. One of my comments sections regulars chimed in from Germany, saying that he’d seen several Amazon marketplace copies listed for thousands of Euros, then he ordered one for five Euros. He asked if anyone understood this. Basically, the only thing you have to understand is not everybody in prison is a crook, and most crooks never go to prison.
I remember reading an interview with Charles Ardai where he said something to the effect that they had produced one book without a girl on the cover and it was one of their worst selling titles, maybe the worst (don’t recall), so that would never happen again even if they had to really stretch to find a way to get one on there.
(That book was Witness to Myself by Seymour Shubin, for the answer to the trivia question.)
I’m 110% okay with girls on the cover. I just want her to be a zaftig blonde, not a zaftig brunette. If anything, I prefer brunettes, but that’s not the point. Marian James is a blonde. And Harry Kunt (can’t do an umlaut here) has a sense of humor. And never gets a huge satchel of money. But as long as people are reading it.
But I get marketing. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I mean, fine, put a gun on the cover, it’s a crime novel.
But there’s a goddam handheld military LASER in this novel! (Which could not possibly exist in reality, but that’s beside the point). That’s a way cooler thing to put on the cover than some generic handgun. Nobody ever shows the laser, on any cover I’ve seen. It bugs me.
Being a french-speaking reader, let me apologize for my unaccurate writing, but did really nobody noticed that this Westlake’s one takes his roots in Richard Stark’s Lemons Never Lie (part II, ch. 3, the 2nd meeting with that awful Myers) ?
I’ve read this Künt story thanks to Fred Fitch, as well as A Likely Story, and I still wonder why it isn’t translated in French. Maybe because all the damn thing starts with the name of the main character, which for I cannot imagine a french translation.