Dortmunder Books in Order

Fresh from prison, thief John Dortmunder is recruited by Andy Kelp to steal a valuable emerald. The job promises a return to professional crime, but recovering the same stone repeatedly turns one planned robbery into a succession of increasingly troublesome heists.

John Dortmunder and his crew decide to steal an entire bank operating temporarily from a trailer. When its safe resists their efforts and police close in, they must find somewhere on Long Island to hide their unwieldy prize.

Andy Kelp convinces John Dortmunder to plan a kidnapping using a Richard Stark crime novel as their blueprint. The fictional scheme seems foolproof, but real people and unforeseen complications quickly expose the dangers of treating a book as an instruction manual.

A wealthy art collector arranges legal help for Dortmunder, then hires him to steal a painting for insurance money. To make the fraud convincing, the collector refuses inside assistance, leaving Dortmunder navigating a burglary that becomes far less straightforward than promised.

Dortmunder's routine pawnshop burglary accidentally nets a priceless ruby stolen earlier by someone else. Politicians, terrorists, police, and fellow criminals all want it back, leaving the bewildered thief searching for a way to undo the most troublesome success of his career.

Fleeing a failed burglary, Dortmunder lands in a convent and receives help from its nuns. Their price is rescuing a young sister imprisoned by her wealthy father, forcing the reluctant thief to plan an almost impossible extraction from a guarded penthouse.

Dortmunder's former cellmate wants help recovering robbery money buried beneath a flooded town. The man's plan to destroy the reservoir dam would kill innocent people, so Dortmunder must devise a safer way to retrieve the cash before impatience causes disaster.

Dortmunder is hired to steal a saint's ancient thighbone, a relic contested by two newly formed European countries. Its possession could determine international recognition, turning his gang's peculiar assignment into a struggle involving diplomacy, religion, and predictably uncooperative circumstances.

Billionaire Max Fairbanks catches Dortmunder during a burglary and takes the thief's supposedly lucky ring. Insulted, Dortmunder launches repeated attacks on Fairbanks's property, determined to reclaim it, even as successful thefts fail to recover the one object he actually wants.

Dortmunder and Andy Kelp are recruited to replace remains in a grave as part of a casino-inheritance scheme. A showgirl's supposed tribal ancestry could unlock a fortune, but manipulating the evidence entangles the thieves with unscrupulous partners and mounting complications.

Dortmunder's gang targets a corrupt executive's collection of vintage cars, but other people also have grievances against the owner. Angry workers and cheated investors complicate the robbery, threatening to place the thieves in a dangerous collision between rival schemes.

Unlucky thief John Dortmunder returns in a collection of short comic crime adventures. Westlake follows his familiar criminal hero beyond the novels, bringing the complications and frustrations of a life of theft into shorter stories.

A fence offers Dortmunder an apparently easy robbery of a wealthy absentee's art-filled Manhattan penthouse. Planning the job is interrupted by another criminal threat, forcing the gang to contend simultaneously with its wealthy target and an ambitious mobster.

A retired policeman blackmails Dortmunder into stealing a priceless chess set once intended for Russia's last czar. The reluctant thief gathers his gang for an apparently impossible treasure hunt, confronting obstacles rooted in the set's complicated history and guarded present location.

A television producer persuades Dortmunder and his gang to star in a reality show documenting their next robbery. Cameras promise publicity and incriminating evidence, leaving the thieves needing an ingenious plan to complete the crime without handing their guilt to viewers.