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Rating: 
Summary: 4 and a half stars, really
Review: I started reading Westlake in about 1988, and have picked up a novel or two every year since then. "I Gave At The Office" is definitely one of my favorites. If you have never read Westlake, you could hardly pick a better one to start with. I might recommend the very first, "Adios, Scheherazade" also. Like many of my favorite artists, Westlake has done some great ones, and some not so great. If the term "great" is appropriate to Westlake at all, this book is right up there.
Westlake is a rare bird, and a writer's writer, so to speak; and a pundit's pundit. His novels all speak very much of Donald Westlake himself, and his worldview. He started out with a cynical career in dimestore novels, with a worldly bent that speaks volumes about life in the way a man shakes hands, wears a hat, or drives a car, and a blunt sense of humour. He seems to especially love detective and action novels. He also has always been chimpy nutz with intense and wacky humor, and a strong delivery of aforementioned humor. "I Gave At The Office" is one of the most hilarious.
Set in the early '70s, this is the story of a down-at-the-heels news writer assigned to report on a U.S.-financed Carribean insurgency in the making, one that the news agency is so intent on that on finding nothing there, they proceed to help with said financing themselves rather than go home empty-handed. A classic Catch-22 like Westlake was the best at, save, uh, Joseph Heller. A very easy read, and hilarious, this novel would grace the back of any potty.
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