Tempted to find a highly valuable, seven-hundred-pound chess set, hapless crook John Dortmunder musters his merry band of fellow ne'er-do-wells on a haphazard treasure hunt that prompts his investigation of Russia's last czar, an effort in which he enlists the assistance of tough former cop Johnny Eppick. Reprint.
Having set up a con on Monroe Hall, a fabulously wealthy and corrupt CEO, John Dortmunder and his hapless gang of crooks suddenly find themselves caught in the deadly crossfire between their would-be mark Hall and his own victims, a group of angry union members and blue-blooded suckers who have lost their family fortunes. Reprint.
When luckless thief John Dortmunder reluctantly agrees to allow his gang to appear in a reality television cop show that promises a lucrative payout and legal protection, he and his partner, Kelp, devise a secondary plot to deceive case-cracking television viewers.