Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner

Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner is one of Donald Westlake’s best comic crime novels. Harry Künt (“don’t forget the umlaut”) is a normal guy with a love of practical jokes who finds himself sentenced to 5-15 years in an upstate New York prison for a joke gone awry. Harry is trying to keep his head down to secure an early release, but his plans are turned upside down when his fellow prisoners (who have discovered an underground tunnel out of the prison) force him to assist in a bank robbery where they will have the perfect alibi. The book loses just a bit of steam toward the end, but the first two-thirds is top shelf Westlake.