Money for Nothing

Rating:
Summary: A Humorous Spy Thriller
Review: So one day, out of the blue you receive a cheque for $1000. Do you throw it in the bin or, after making a reasonable effort to find out who sent it and why, do you cash it and keep the money? Josh Redmont went with the second option and the cheques continued to arrive for seven years.

Since cashing that first cheque, Josh has finished university and found a job with an advertising agency. He is now married with a young son. He has also changed apartments a couple of time in those 7 years and the cheques kept arriving as regular as clockwork, finding him at his new address which was rather disturbing.

Then one day, while his wife and son are taking a short holiday without him, he is approached by a man who appears quite friendly right up until the moment he utters a phrase that almost stops his heart - "you are now active". The man uttering these words is Mr Levrin. He's under the impression that Josh is a deep undercover mole who has been waiting these past 7 years to be called into action. It's a belief that Josh instinctively didn't dare contradict.

And so, Josh Redmont is thrust into the spy world, a most unwilling participant. He is joined by another accidental mole by the name of Mitchell Robbie. Together they figure out that they've been activated to participate in an assassination attempt and then they figure out just how expendable they will be when the job is over. Not a pleasant thought, but one which motivates them into action.

Donald Westlake is an author who is able to put an amusing spin on any subject he chooses. Whether it's the wry humour that you acknowledge with the twitching of the corner of the mouth or uncontrollable bursts of laughter that leave you red-faced while witting on the train (*sigh*), both moments are provided in MONEY FOR NOTHING. He slips the humour into this spy thriller / assassination conspiracy effortlessly and although it should feel out of place in the more dramatic scenes, it doesn't.

We only really ever find out the bare minimum about each character, just enough to keep the story unfolding. Although he's the protagonist, we don't really get to know Josh particularly well apart from the fact that he loves his family and that will motivate him to stay alive. The bad guys are nothing more than caricatures of all the menacing evil secret agents and their henchmen ever to grace a thriller story. Mitchell Robbie, however, turns out to be a goldmine of entertainment value and I felt he stole the show every time he came into the picture. He is a budding amateur actor who embraces his role of undercover mole as an opportunity to put his fledgling acting experience through its paces.

It's strange, Josh, his wife and Mitchell Robbie are all in serious trouble, their lives are in danger and they suffer at the hands of their captors, yet thanks to Westlake's prose the story still felt light and amusing. Heck, it wasn't until people started getting shot that I realised that the situation was actually getting serious. It's not a complex plot in fact the premise is quite straightforward once the predicament is explained. What is complex though is working out how Josh was going to get himself and his family out of what looks to be a desperately dire situation.

By and large Donald Westlake stories are humorous affairs with the protagonist placed in the most difficult and sometimes ludicrous situations. The entertainment value lies in watching the imaginative ways in which these characters try to get out of those situations. In MONEY FOR NOTHING, Westlake has definitely stayed true to form, both creating an outlandish predicament for his protagonist and then injecting plenty of humorous moments as he engineers his way out of it.

Rating:
Summary: Money is the root of all evil!
Review: Stick with Westlake if you love comedy, mysteries or novels noir. His "Parker" series itself is an unequaled classic.

Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Curt Clark et all, has written another good comic mystery. While MONEY FOR NOTHING is not as goofy or as humorous as his excellent "Dortmunder" series, it does tell a good story.

While a student in college Josh Redmond starts receiveing $1000 per month from an anonymous benefactor. He continues to receive these check for the next seven years. That's $84,000! Because he needs the money Josh makes a feeble attempt to find out where the checks come from, then he gives up and just accepts the checks as a sort of "gift from God." After his marrage Josh never tells his wife about the mysterious money. As one might expect, with out warning, the mysterious benefactor makes himself known and demands certain services for his money. What happens next threatens to destroy Josh, Josh's family, and his friends.

MONEY FOR NOTHING must be Westlake's five hundredth novel! (I really don't know how many novels, short stories, screen plays and articles he has written, but there are websites devoted to him.) I have been trying for years to read everything Westlake has written. Every time I think I have him covered I find another "Nome de Plume" for this prolific wordsmith. Several of his books have been made into big bucks movies, PAYBACK staring Mel Gibson and WHAT'STHE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN with Danny Devito are just two that I can name.

Rating:
Summary: Money is the root of all evil!
Review: Stick with Westlake if you love comedy, mysteries or novels noir. His "Parker" series itself is an unequaled classic.

Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Curt Clark et all, has written another good comic mystery. While MONEY FOR NOTHING is not as goofy or as humorous as his excellent "Dortmunder" series, it does tell a good story.

While a student in college Josh Redmond starts receiveing $1000 per month from an anonymous benefactor. He continues to receive these check for the next seven years. That's $84,000! Because he needs the money Josh makes a feeble attempt to find out where the checks come from, then he gives up and just accepts the checks as a sort of "gift from God." After his marrage Josh never tells his wife about the mysterious money. As one might expect, with out warning, the mysterious benefactor makes himself known and demands certain services for his money. What happens next threatens to destroy Josh, Josh's family, and his friends.

MONEY FOR NOTHING must be Westlake's five hundredth novel! (I really don't know how many novels, short stories, screen plays and articles he has written, but there are websites devoted to him.) I have been trying for years to read everything Westlake has written. Every time I think I have him covered I find another "Nome de Plume" for this prolific wordsmith. Several of his books have been made into big bucks movies, PAYBACK staring Mel Gibson and WHAT'STHE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN with Danny Devito are just two that I can name.

Rating:
Summary: Money is the root of all evil!
Review: Stick with Westlake if you love comedy, mysteries or novels noir. His "Parker" series itself is an unequaled classic.

Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Curt Clark et all, has written another good comic mystery. While MONEY FOR NOTHING is not as goofy or as humorous as his excellent "Dortmunder" series, it does tell a good story.

While a student in college Josh Redmond starts receiveing $1000 per month from an anonymous benefactor. He continues to receive these check for the next seven years. That's $84,000! Because he needs the money Josh makes a feeble attempt to find out where the checks come from, then he gives up and just accepts the checks as a sort of "gift from God." After his marrage Josh never tells his wife about the mysterious money. As one might expect, with out warning, the mysterious benefactor makes himself known and demands certain services for his money. What happens next threatens to destroy Josh, Josh's family, and his friends.

MONEY FOR NOTHING must be Westlake's five hundredth novel! (I really don't know how many novels, short stories, screen plays and articles he has written, but there are websites devoted to him.) I have been trying for years to read everything Westlake has written. Every time I think I have him covered I find another "Nome de Plume" for this prolific wordsmith. Several of his books have been made into big bucks movies, PAYBACK staring Mel Gibson and WHAT'STHE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN with Danny Devito are just two that I can name.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Enjoyable Pseudo-Spy Story!
Review: This is my first experience with Westlake and I picked up the audiobook at my library sort of by default - there weren't many "newer" titles on the shelf! I actually really enjoyed it. It's true that the character development was limited, but I liked that I never had a clue how this story (that everyone else has already described in detail, so I won't) was going to end or even what was coming next. It's pretty enjoyable to listen to a book with a plot I can't figure out.. and rare! It was an odd mixture of seriousness and comedy with some strange characters, but this guy pulled it off and I will likely give Mr. Westlake's other titles a try!

I'm also enjoying asking people what they would have done if they'd received mysterious checks. It gives one something to think about.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Worry, We'll Think of Something
Review: Westlake is one of the great names in genre fiction (Actually, he's several of the great names in genre fiction, but that's another discussion, entirely), and a book by him is sure to be interesting, enticing, and eminently readable, at the very least. But, every so often, he produces something that reads more like an exercise than a fully thought out work. MFN is such a book. One can't get over the feeling that he came up with an amusing premise for a tale and then decided to challenge himself to see how many roadblocks he could put in his own way to try to figure out a solution. This, by the way, is similar to a couple of "challenge" novels he wrote with Brian Garfield a couple of decades ago wherein each author wrote a chapter whose main goal was to get the protagonists into an impossible situation and leave the other one to figure out how to extricate them. As a literary exercise, it's a lot of fun. As a novel, it leaves the reader asking "What next?", not in anticipation, but exasperation. Westlake can no more write a bad novel than Peter O'Toole can give a bad performance. But this is not one for the pantheon... more like for the underpatheon.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable Plot
Review: Westlake took an unbelievable plot, but even then it might have worked had he not put two bumbling characters in the middle of it. If they were able to be witty, sarcastic and foolish, in the face of death. Then it made it hard for the reader to be too concerned over their fate.

Rating:
Summary: Unbelievable Plot
Review: What a disappointment. Westlake has some funny moments in this book, but I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. The premise is intriguing and the plot absurd. Often times, these capers can be fun, but not here. There is little character development and the plot is not even intriguing. The writing is simple and fast, but I did not really care what happened. I was bored by parts and glad to see it end. Westlake must be good--he has the awards to show for it--just not here.

Rating:
Summary: Money for Nothing...Indeed.
Review: What a disappointment. Westlake has some funny moments in this book, but I kept waiting for something interesting to happen. The premise is intriguing and the plot absurd. Often times, these capers can be fun, but not here. There is little character development and the plot is not even intriguing. The writing is simple and fast, but I did not really care what happened. I was bored by parts and glad to see it end. Westlake must be good--he has the awards to show for it--just not here.

Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Read
Review: What would you do if you started receiving a monthly check from United States Agent for $1,000? What would you do if you tried to locate this company, but could not find out anything about it besides the name and a basic street address with no house number?

In "Money For Nothing," Josh Redmont decides to cash those checks. Every month. For seven years. And stops thinking much about it until the day a stranger shows up to let Josh know he has now been activated. When Josh seems confused, the stranger tells him that the original contact, Nimrin, has retired and that he, Levrin, will now be his contact.

Josh meets up with Nimrin later and he explains that he recruited Josh and others as sleeper agents nine years earlier. The monthly checks were to go to Nimrin and they did until he was forced into retirement. By accepting the checks, Josh implied to those in charge that he knew what was going on.

When Levrin activated him and he did not refuse, Josh became involved in a plot to assassinate a visiting leader. The only way out now is kill or be killed. They killed one of the others who cashed the checks, leaving one other person not yet activated. Josh decides to find this individual, off-off-off Broadway actor Mitch Robbie, in order to warn him of what is about to happen.

At first scared, and then later intrigued, Mitch sees beyond the kill or be killed argument. He hatches a plot to keep the original plan from taking place and forces Josh beyond his myopic view of the situation. He shows Josh that they have the chance to regain control of their lives and keep the assassination from happening. And once again Josh signs on despite himself.

Even though this is a plot-driven novel, the characters stand out as original and real. The reader experiences Josh's fear and indecision and is more than willing to ride along with him as he tries to discover exactly who, and what, he is up against.

Westlake's addition of the actor Mitch Robbie is inspired as well as hilarious. Mitch brings a note of humor to the book, often acting as the spur for the slow-to-work-it-out Josh. Even the side characters, though somewhat stereotypical in the long view, have personality quirks in the short view that make them human and almost likeable.