Jimmy the Kid

This is the least good Dortmunder novel in the series so far. The characters are getting stale — Rollo always describes people by what they drink, Murch only talks about what routes he drives, etc — but it's fun enough. A problem with so many books with a “twist” is that they try to subtly point out to you that there will be a twist, without explicitly saying what. But there is only ever one possible twist, and so knowing there will be one is sufficient to learn what it is. Jimmy the Kid falls to this problem, which makes the third act predictable and rather boring. All in all, it's a fine read, but I wouldn't have picked it up if it were a standalone novel.