The caper story is a subgenre of crime fiction. The typical caper story involves one or more crimes perpetrated by the main characters in full view of the reader. The actions of police or detectives attempting to prevent or solve the crimes may also be chronicled, but are not the main focus of the story. The caper story is distinguished from the straight crime story by elements of humor, adventure, or unusual cleverness or audacity. For instance, the Dortmunder stories of Donald E. Westlake are highly comic tales involving unusual thefts by a gang of offbeat characters — in different stories Dortmunder's gang steals the same gem several times, steals an entire branch bank, and kidnaps someone from an asylum by driving a stolen train onto the property. By contrast, the same author's Parker stories are grimly straightforward accounts of mundane crime — the criminal equivalent of the police procedural. Others, such as Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, feature a role reversal, an honest criminal and crooked cop, and the use of burglar Rhodenbarr's criminal talents to solve murders. A caper may appear as a subplot in a larger work. For example, Tom Sawyer's plot to steal Jim out of slavery in the last part of Huckleberry Finn is a classic caper.
Etymology
The verb to caper means to leap in a frolicsome way, and probably derives from capriole, which derives from the Latin for goat. The noun caper means a frolicsome leap, a capricious escapade or an illegal or questionable act.
Examples
Literature
"The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry: two kidnappers find that the little boy they are holding for ransom is more dangerous than the law
A Tough One to Lose by Tony Kenrick, who is often compared with Westlake — an entire airplane and hundreds of passengers go missing; how did this happen?
Now You See It, Now You Don't, a 1968 TV-movie about an art expert who is hired by an insurance company to protect a Rembrandton loan from the Louvre and later hatches a scheme to steal it
