Ordo, a novella of just 73 pages, is the second work in Hard Case Crime’s Double Feature. Ordo Tupikos, a sailor in the US Navy in the early 1970s, is enjoying some down time with friends during a work break. One of them asks him why he never told them he had been married to movie star Dawn Devayne.

Ordo thinks his friend, a practical joker, is kidding, so he brushes him off. But the friend is serious. He shows Ordo a magazine article about Devayne, in which she describes her life before Hollywood. The article mentions her early marriage to Ordo, and includes a photo of them on the courthouse steps just after they’d taken their vows.

A Travesty is the first of two short novels in Donald Westlake’s Double Feature. The story opens with New York film critic Carey Thorpe looking down at the body of the girlfriend he’s just accidentally killed in her own apartment. A series of thoughts run through his mind, most of them converging on self-preservation: how can he get out of this mess without being fingered as the killer?