Drowned Hopes - Abridged

Summary

A comic crime masterpiece featuring anti-hero John Dortmunder.

Arriving home after another failed burglary, John Dortmunder is shocked to find his apartment occupied by a notorious cellmate that everyone had supposed (and hoped) had been jailed for life. Tom Jimson needs Dortmunder's help. Thirty years before his last prison stretch, Tom had pulled a big job up near Albany, one that left a cool $700,000 in cash buried under a water reservoir near Albany, New York. Tom's plan is to blow up the dam, flood the surrounding countryside, and grab the cash. With the fate of 900 small town nobodies hanging in the balance, Dortmunder races against Tom's itchy dynamite finger to formulate an alternative plan for retrieving the loot. Thus begins a complex caper of misadventure and hilarity as only Donald E. Westlake can tell.