![dek](https://content.time.com/time/daily/2010/1003/ashort_memory_0405.jpg)
This posthumous work from crime writer Donald Westlake, who died in 2008, concerns Paul Cole, whose memory is impaired when he is attacked midtryst by his lover's husband. Less a mystery than an unsparing look at a man adrift, it's a fitting final dispatch from a master.