361 (1962) – Random House – DonaldWestlake.com

This was a very early novel, and the first one in which I did any experimenting. There were writers I admired — Dashiell Hammett, Vladimir Nabokov, Peter Rabe — who could do something I very much envied, which was to make you feel the emotion in a scene without ever referring to it directly. It all roils below the surface while the surface remains apparently calm. In 361, I set out to learn if I could do that. I enjoyed the process and enjoyed the result, and I find I still do. I’m delighted to see it back in print. ~DEW

_____I remember being moved. The doctor said that was impossible, it was a false memory, but I remember it. And a guy saying, “Look at the leg.”
_____Then there was a long gray time, and then a time when I knew I was in a hospital bed, but I didn’t care. Nurse rustlings, glass clinkings, paper cracklings, they all happened far away in some other world. The same with movement, white against white, people passing the foot of the bed.
_____Then I realized I wasn’t seeing with my right eye. All the layers of fuzzy white were in a plane, I didn’t have any depth perspective. When I closed just the left eye, it went away.
_____I made a sound, and it was awful. Then there was hurried rustling, and a balloon of flesh hung over me, with smudgy eyes. A woman’s voice asked, “Are we awake?”