YMMV / Dancing Aztecs

• Ass Pull: The Wham Line that Bobbi's statue isn't the real one after all of the others are seemingly eliminated and it's several chapters before the characters find this out. This is explained well several chapters later, but until then, it can be pretty disconcerting (something that's lampshaded by the characters).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Several statue owners whom the main characters go after are pretty popular among the fanbase despite only appearing a few times in one of Donald Westlake's longest books.
  • F. Xavier White the Undertaker is overshadowed by other characters even in the scene from his point-of-view. Still, he's pretty well-liked for the hilarious scenes where he's ordered to find a bunch of celebrities to attend a mob funeral and, upon failing, resorts to having all of his employees and relatives disguise themselves as celebrities.
  • Cross-country travelers Eddie and Jenny have even less prominence than Xavier and are among the less funny characters in a comic novel. Still, readers like them quite a bit for how respectfully their interracial relationship is portrayed in a book that's mostly just Fair for Its Day on racial issues.
• Fair for Its Day: The book has some of Donald Westlake's funniest scenes and characters, but has some undeniable Values Dissonance in stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, homosexuals and the Irish, and the well-developed McCann brothers causally and frequently use the n-word. Still, the various minority characters are well-developed and distinct, with many being non-stereotypical, and racism is portrayed as an unenlightened attitude. Part of Jerry's Character Development comes from how the treasure hunt exposes him to how those different kinds of people (like the Camp Gay couple) can live different, happy lives than the one he's taken for granted for so long.