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soapythebum's review
3.0
This is the first in the series that I feel was a 'clunker.' I enjoyed reading it about as much as Dormunder enjoyed the job.
isovector's review
2.0
Long and boring and has lots of bad computer stuff that's aged worse than yer grandma who spent a lifetime smoking two packs a day and exclusively drinking whiskey.
janetlun's review
I generally really like the Dortmunder books, but this one fell flat for me. I think the problem was that the Dortmunder books are light-hearted romps, and in this one there's a character who is genuinely vicious.
tony's review
2.0
Worst in the series so far. The book is twice the length of some of the previous ones, and for no apparent reason — some of the shortest have had much more elaborate plots. This one merely plods along, with very little cleverness or humour in the main plot (rather than in the asides), and the dialogues between Wally and his computer are simply painful.
nigellicus's review
5.0
Truly great Dortmunder caper where he is invited to help an old cellmate who happens to be a terrifying sociopath recover stolen money from the bottom of a reservoir. It's not really Dortmunder's thing, but seeing as if he doesn't the old cell-mate intends to resort to dynamite and flood a valley full of unsuspecting citizens, he feels obliged to make the effort. There follows a series of attempts to get down to the money and to get the money up. None of them go smoothly. Complications accrue and increase, as does the cast of characters involved, with lots of old familiars and a few new faces, such as Wally the round moist computer guy and Doug the diver, and with each disaster Dortmunder becomes more and more reluctant and has to be persuaded back to the job with extreme measures lest Tom the cellmate decide to go ahead with the whole dynamite thing.
Daft as a brush but full of a kind of remorselessly hilarious logic, Drowned Hopes is pure wet brilliance. It's even got that line about no dogs in a reservoir which set at least one friend of mine wondering about a certain film title.
Daft as a brush but full of a kind of remorselessly hilarious logic, Drowned Hopes is pure wet brilliance. It's even got that line about no dogs in a reservoir which set at least one friend of mine wondering about a certain film title.
arbieroo's review
2.0
Apparently there is a whole series of "Dortmunder" books and this isn't the first. It's a mildly amusing crime caper novel, in which Dortmunder is the brains (allegedly) for the underwater salvage of a recently released psycho's spoils from an armed robbery. It would have been a lot better, though, if not for the computer geek and his computer. The book was published in 1990 and the PC was still pretty new-fangled (the first time I used one was only the year before). The computer geek as comedic butt is not so much the problem (but more on that later) as the enormous length of time spent describing the PC and how it works, what you can do with it (play Donkey Kong, for instance), which nobody needs these days, only to be followed by a bunch of highly unrealistic uses and responses from it. (It's as if there's a mind in there that can talk back to the user). It's dated as well as crass.
If you can leave that aside, the rest of it is amusing, particularly the ironic ending, but it's hard to do as the PC takes up far to much space in the book and just when you think you're permanently done with it, it makes a come-back. I suspect that other Dortmunder novels, with no PC obsessions evident might be better than this one.
Back to the computer geek: It's a species that's going extinct. This is because knowing heaps about computers is not the preserve of socially inept obsessives any more. The younger the generation the more computer knowledge is ubiquitous and unremarkable. Electronic computing pervades life now and the people who have grown up in that environment take it for granted. It is normal and familar. The people who know most about it, far from being social pariahs by assumption are celebrated. So the computer geek as comic butt is a concept that is dating rapidly. Other socially inept geeks are replacing them.
If you can leave that aside, the rest of it is amusing, particularly the ironic ending, but it's hard to do as the PC takes up far to much space in the book and just when you think you're permanently done with it, it makes a come-back. I suspect that other Dortmunder novels, with no PC obsessions evident might be better than this one.
Back to the computer geek: It's a species that's going extinct. This is because knowing heaps about computers is not the preserve of socially inept obsessives any more. The younger the generation the more computer knowledge is ubiquitous and unremarkable. Electronic computing pervades life now and the people who have grown up in that environment take it for granted. It is normal and familar. The people who know most about it, far from being social pariahs by assumption are celebrated. So the computer geek as comic butt is a concept that is dating rapidly. Other socially inept geeks are replacing them.
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