Dancing Aztecs

Dancing Aztecs is a comic crime novel involving a smuggled priceless Aztec artifact plus fifteen plaster copies, all of which end up in the hands of a variety of New Yorkers. Many Westlake fans love this book (e.g., David Bratman and Patricia Abbott) but I found its humor to be too exaggerated (it is almost slapstick in style) to rank with his best work. (By the way, it is very similar in tone and plot to Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 film What’s Up, Doc?)