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The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People’s Revolutionary Army, who’ve decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life...

• First publication ever!
• Publishers Weekly on THE COMEDY IS FINISHED: "Sharply written and insightful."
• Booklist on THE COMEDY IS FINISHED: "A tense, compelling story...painfully insightful...[readers will] be hard-pressed to put the book down."
• Detectives Beyond Borders on THE COMEDY IS FINISHED: "Unexpectedly moving."
• Tom Piccirilli, writing on The Cold Spot: "Rife with unexpected scenes of great emotional power and poignancy...You just don’t expect a razor-wire read like this to be so full of feeling...THE COMEDY IS FINISHED is a perfect capper to a brilliant career."
• A lost, unpublished novel by best-selling novelist Donald Westlake
• Westlake was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of "The Grifters," and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, the organization’s highest honor

"One of the great writers of the 20th Century."

— Newsweek

"The novel’s deeper meditations will keep you thinking long after you’ve closed the book."

— USA Today