Somebody Owes Me Money

Donald E Westlake

I bet none of it would have happened if I wasn't so eloquent. That's always been my problem, eloquence, though some might claim my problem was something else again. But life's a gamble, is what I say, and not all the eloquent people in this world are in Congress.

Once you introduce dum-dum bullets into a plot, you cannot go about forgetting this fact. Authors, Westlake or otherwise, can't simply go about tossing dum-dum bullets into guns, having evil criminals muttering while they carve dum-dum bullets at their kitchen table, and finding whopping holes blown in victims by guns firing dum-dum bullets. And then unceremoniously forget that they ever existed. It's not ethical.