Crossover Cover: The Hot Rock

John Dortmunder attempts to break fellow professional thief (and occasional actor) Alan Greenwood out of prison. Greenwood plans to change his name to Alan Grofield after the escape. A professional thief named Alan Grofield appears in Westlake’s Parker novels, written under the pen name “Richard Stark,” and is also the protagonist of four other novels written under the Stark pseudonym. Can the two Alan Grofields be the same person? Another Dortmunder novel, Nobody’s Perfect, claims Greenwood became a successful television actor under his original name. This seems exceedingly unlikely, since Greenwood would be wanted by the police for his prison escape. Since both the Parker and Dortmunder series have links to the CU, it is more likely the reference in Nobody’s Perfect is a distortion, and the two Grofields are indeed one and the same.

Crossover Cover: Don't Ask

John Dortmunder once again crosses paths with guards working for the Continental Detective Agency. The country of Klopstokia is mentioned, as is the Frankenstein family. The Continental Detective Agency is from Dashiell Hammett’s stories about the Continental Op. The Frankenstein family needs no explanation at this point. Klopstokia is from the film Million Dollar Legs.

Crossover Cover: A Likely Story

The Italian restaurant Tre Mafiosi appears. This eatery can also be seen in Westlake’s Dortmunder novel What’s So Funny?, as well as another non-series novel by Westlake, Money for Nothing. Since the Dortmunder books take place in the CU, so do A Likely Story and Money for Nothing.

Crossover Cover: Bank Shot

John Dortmunder literally steals a bank guarded by the Continental Detective Agency, from Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op stories. Since the Op is in the CU, so is Dortmunder. The guards would pop up several more times in the Dortmunder series.

Crossover Covers: 32 Cadillacs/Drowned Hopes

These two novels show the same scene from different points of view, in which members of the Dan Kearny and Associates (DKA) agency repossess a Cadillac stolen by John Dortmunder and his gang of thieves. Since DKA is in the CU through Kearny's encounter with the ghost of the Continental Op, so is Dortmunder.