It gestures towards the comic caper a la Dortmunder, but it also has elements of Westlake's hard-boiled Parker series (as by Richard Stark). The Ha Ha Bonk Book; Help Your Child to Read; Ten in a Bed; Please Mrs Butler; Daisy Chains; Yum Yum; Playmates; Foldaways; Woof; The Cinderella Show; The Jolly Postman; The Jolly Christmas Postman; The Jolly Pocket Postman; The Clothes Horse and Other Stories; The Mighty Slide; Starting School; Heard it in the Playground; The Bear Nobody Wanted; It was a Dark and Stormy Night; The Giant Baby; Baby Sleeps; Blue Buggy; Doll and Teddy; See the Rabbit; Please Mrs Butler; The Better Brown Stories; The Boyhood of Burglar Bill The robbers of London town plan a desperate crime one Christmas Eve - to steal all the toys they can lay their hands on! More Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon.

A ballad about a gang of robbers with a Christmas heist in the works, and the brave Officer Pugh who saves the day. Indeed, part of me half-expected the final sentence to be something like "And then the doorbell rang"--iirc, in fact, one of Westlake's early crime novels ( The Mercenaries I believe) had just such an ending).Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. But if the protagonists are aggressively ordinary -- their names are Tom and Joe -- it's an ordinariness that's very specific to its 30-year-old setting, including that setting's conception of ordinary working stiffs as white men with middle-class jobs (something that goes along with the above-mentioned casual racism). Fortunately, the robbers meet their match in brave Officer Pugh who leaps into action and arrests the villains – all except Grandma Swagg who manages to get away. His most well-known characters were John Dortmunder, an unlucky thief, and Parker, a ruthless criminal. Describes a book or dust jacket that does show some signs of wear on either the binding, dust jacket or pages.

But they meet their match in Officer Pugh, London town’s most revered copper, ‘He can run like a hare, and fight like a bear; And he’s good at crosswords too. He has published over 100 children's books and, with his late wife Janet, created such award winning picture books as EACH PEACH PEAR PLUM and THE JOLLY POSTMAN - both winners of the Kate Greenaway Medal.The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Home Alone and that episode of the Simpsons where Bart burns down the tree and blames it on burglars.