Rating: 
Summary: delightful wild ride
Review: Advertising executive Josh Redmont waits for the ferry to take him to Fire Island where he will join his wife and child on vacation. However, a stranger informs John that "You are now active." For seven years, John has been the recipient of a monthly one grand check from the United States Agency that he thought was an error, but eventually from his country. Now this USA wants to collect. He is expected to help foreign nationals assassinate the premier of a foreign nation visiting Yankee Stadium.Josh's New York apartment will serve as a safe house. Unbeknownst to the former sleeper agent who didn't realize he was sleeping is that once the deed is done he becomes expendable too. Josh meets another recently activated former ingenuous sleeper, off-Broadway actor Mitch Robbie. They partner in an attempt to survive this fiasco. Take the seemingly impossible, blend inside the inconceivable, and mix that with the immovable and what do you get: another delightful wild ride by Donald E. Westlake. He takes an illogical scenario that when read in a short review or a cover inset appears crazy, but turns it into a stark thriller that hooks the audience into believing the unbelievable. MONEY FOR NOTHING takes the premise and runs with it so that the audience receives a taut thriller starring a delightful lead character supported by a strong cast. Readers who buy this book will know they spent money for something worth reading. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Offbeat tale of a regular guy in a real jam.
Review: Ample and very entertaining cleverness is on display in the opening chapters of this book, as author Westlake constructs a truly imaginative yet believable scenario where an everyday middle-class New Yorker suddenly wakes up to find himself an undercover operative for a radical activist group from the Ukraine! Ample and very entertaining cleverness is also on display in the middle section, as our hero (the middle-class New Yorker) finds satisfying ways to regain a measure of control and turn the tables on his foreign handlers... for a time, anyway. The final chapters, alas, dispense with the ample and entertaining cleverness, but still deliver serviceable scenes of escape attempts, confrontation, and resolution. All in all, then, we end up with a pretty good thriller that is easily worth spending a couple of days reading on the porch or at the beach.
Rating:
Summary: Not One of Westlake's Better Efforts
Review: Donald E. Westlake's _Money For Nothing_, is kind of a strange book. It almost seems like Westlake isn't sure whether to turn this into a comic romp, like his Dortmunder books, or to be deadly serious, as in _The Ax_, so what we have is a bit of both, if you can imagine that. Josh Redmont, an average New Yorker, has been receiving monthly checks of $1000 from a company called United States Agent for years. When the checks first started arriving, he did some minimal checking around to see if he could find the company or discern the reason for the checks, but his efforts never panned out. Now, many years later, he's approached by a stranger, who tells him "You are now active."
Josh is drawn into a dangerous world of spies and espionage with this simple command, and everything he does to try to pry himself loose seems to be of no avail, as he gets mired deeper and deeper in the scheme to assassinate the visiting head of an Eastern European dictatorship.
This is a weird mix of humor and seriousness. As Josh and a fellow agent, Mitch Robbie, go about trying to extricate themselves, there are a lot of humorous scenes. But the whole book ultimately builds to a violent climax that requires Josh to stand up to his captors and turn the tables on them and is deadly serious. I enjoyed the book, but it isn't on par with recent work by Westlake, such as _Bad News_ or _Put a Lid On It_.
Rating: 
Summary: An amusing, engrossing spy romp
Review: For seven years, each month Josh Redmont has been cashing thousand dollar checks from an unknown benefactor. Money for nothing. Until one day a mysterious stranger arrives to "activate" him, to become a spy for the Ukraine. The Ukraine? Well, Russia didn't get everything after the breakup of the Soviet Union, and in this case the Ukraine inherited a unwitting spy who is now expected to do something very deadly as payback for all that money. I will not claim that "Money for Nothing" packs the emotional punch of Westlake's "The Ax" or "The Hook" or that it is quite so funny as the wonderful, googy Dortmunder books. But "Money for Nothing" is still an interesting read about a rather average guy who finds himself in a very deadly situation. Make no mistake about it, there is a very palpable sense of menace lurking here, and it is entirely believable that the real cost of the "money for nothing" may be the lives of Josh, his wife, and his son. There was enough suspense generated to keep me eagerly turning the pages to find out what would happen next. As good as "the Ax"? No. But good nonetheless? Definitely yes.
Rating:
Summary: Great read.
Review: Got this book for Christmas. Westlake never disappoints, however, I give this book four stars only because it isn't his best, and if you're a Westlake fan you come to expect only the best from him. Still, it's better than most books sitting on the shelves in your local bookstore. With Westlake you are sure to always get taught action and crisp dialogue. The writing is never a failure. Give this one a shot and enjoy it, but be sure to try some of his other works. I recommend THE AX.
Rating:
Summary: And Your Spies for Free
Review: Josh receives a cheque for $1000 and has no idea why he received it. Month after month he receives another, and another. He tries to work out who is paying the money but no one answers the phone number on the cheque and the address is incomplete. After seven years Josh has become used to the money. He now has a family but he also has a man waiting for him at the bordering area to his daily ferry. It seems Josh has been paid to be a sleeper agent for the Russians without even knowing it and they have some evil plans for him. This is a pretty good novel although it does move a bit slow at times. It is an enjoyable read though. I read the Ax also by Westlake before this which was brilliant so it did put my expectations up to masterpiece standards for this book which it did not quite achieve. Still a good book though. Definitely read the Ax if you are looking for a great Westlake novel.
Rating:
Summary: And Your Spies for Free
Review: Josh receives a cheque for $1000 and has no idea why he received it. Month after month he receives another, and another. He tries to work out who is paying the money but no one answers the phone number on the cheque and the address is incomplete. After seven years Josh has become used to the money. He now has a family but he also has a man waiting for him at the bordering area to his daily ferry. It seems Josh has been paid to be a sleeper agent for the Russians without even knowing it and they have some evil plans for him. This is a pretty good novel although it does move a bit slow at times. It is an enjoyable read though. I read the Ax also by Westlake before this which was brilliant so it did put my expectations up to masterpiece standards for this book which it did not quite achieve. Still a good book though. Definitely read the Ax if you are looking for a great Westlake novel.
Rating:
Summary: Westlake achieves the impossible while making it look easy
Review: MONEY FOR NOTHING is Donald E. Westlake's latest novel. It is not his greatest or his best, though with a career consisting of so many milestones, that particular bar is a stratospheric one. It is certainly a great book though and, just so no one thinks that The Master is being damned with faint praise here, it is absolutely not to be missed. I'll get the complaint out of the way early, though it's not even a complaint or a quibble...not really. I simply would have preferred the book to have a darker touch. I'm a fan of Westlake's lighter work, such as last year's PUT A LID ON IT and SMOKE, as well as novels he wrote back before I could even hold a pencil properly, or even knew what one was, but that I've only read recently. However, there was a gravitas missing in MONEY FOR NOTHING that I think would have been appropriate. Now let's go the premise. The premise that drives the plot here is worth the price of admission and gravitas shmavitas; it is absolutely brilliant. You take your average schlemiel named Josh Redmont, who is just starting off on his own with more outflow than inflow and all of a sudden he gets a check for one thousand dollars in the mail, issued by "United States Agent." He tries to find out who "United States Agent" is but can't. He figures 'what the hey' and deposits the check. He gets a second check the following month --- and then another and another. Twelve thousand dollars a year! And the checks keep coming. And coming. The seasons change and the years go by. Things get better, inflow matches outflow and then surpasses it on a regular basis. Whereas, at one point, the thousand dollars a month was more often than not a lifesaver, it slowly becomes a nest egg. Redmont marries, he and the Mrs. have a little Redmont and still the checks keep coming, one thousand dollars a month. Money for nothing. And then... Redmont is waiting for the ferry that takes him to the family cottage on Fire Island, when a stranger walks up to him, sits down next to him, smiles and says three things: 1) Hello. 2) I'm from United States Agent. 3) You are now active. Oh, and the stranger also hands him a passbook account book for a Cayman Islands Bank, a passbook that is in the name of JOSH REDMONT, reflecting a deposit and balance, as of the previous day, of forty-thousand dollars. At first, all the nice, generous stranger wants is a safe house. Oh, but that's only where it starts. It doesn't take Josh long to figure out where all of this is going but, when he finds out, he doesn't want any part of it. He also has no idea how he got involved in all of this or how he and his family are going to get out intact --- if they get out at all. And even worse, how is he going to explain it to his wife? He even wishes that he'd never cashed the checks, though, as we find out, it wouldn't have done him any good to refuse them. And besides, what would you have done with them? But...but...here is what is so astounding. Westlake takes this premise, this idea of monthly money for nothing and makes it so perfectly plausible that you can't help but shake your head in wonder. I'll tell you this much: it's not a case of mistaken identity, not at all. Redmont is supposed to get those checks. As they used to say in the old Superman comic books, when something implausible would happen, "It's not a dream! Not an imaginary story!" No, this could happen to you. It would be highly unlikely, but it could happen. So dark touch, light touch, whatever. Westlake once again demonstrates that, in the twilight of a brilliant career, he can continue to achieve the impossible while making it look easy. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but Westlake's done better
Review: My favorite books by Westlake are his Richard Stark books featuring Parker. I'm more used to his hardboiled books than this genre, which is funny but with a good story. I enjoyed "Smoke" quite a bit, diliked "What's the Worst That Could Happen", thought "The Hot Rock" was okay and really really liked "Why Me?". That should give you a good idea of my Westlake standards for the rest of the review... John Redmont started recieving checks for $1000, once a month, when he was 27. Seven years later, the man who's been sending these checks tells him that they are payment to be a sleeper agent, and that he's been activated. What would you do in this situation? Personally, I never got Westlake's sense of humor too much but always enjoyed his writing none the less (Why Me is hilarious, though). Once again, I seldom got the jokes here, with the exception of the actor Robbie Mitchell. He was the best character in the novel, making Redmont seem like a foil at times. All in all, not bad, but I'll take Parker any day. I'd say cast Matthew Perry for the movie...
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good, but Westlake's done better
Review: My favorite books by Westlake are his Richard Stark books featuring Parker. I'm more used to his hardboiled books than this genre, which is funny but with a good story. I enjoyed "Smoke" quite a bit, diliked "What's the Worst That Could Happen", thought "The Hot Rock" was okay and really really liked "Why Me?". That should give you a good idea of my Westlake standards for the rest of the review... John Redmont started recieving checks for $1000, once a month, when he was 27. Seven years later, the man who's been sending these checks tells him that they are payment to be a sleeper agent, and that he's been activated. What would you do in this situation? Personally, I never got Westlake's sense of humor too much but always enjoyed his writing none the less (Why Me is hilarious, though). Once again, I seldom got the jokes here, with the exception of the actor Robbie Mitchell. He was the best character in the novel, making Redmont seem like a foil at times. All in all, not bad, but I'll take Parker any day. I'd say cast Matthew Perry for the movie...
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