God Save the Mark: A Novel of Crime and Confusion

Near the top. Bank Shot will always be my favorite, but God Save the Mark was also pretty great. Donald Westlake finds a way to make every crime worth laughing about.

When Harry realized that someone had been shooting at him

Great voices for each of the many characters

Donald Westlake. I want to know where he gets his ideas.

I always prefer the audio version of any book.

When the hero turns and starts to fight back

He was good, but not as good as the reader in Westlake's earlier books.

There's a sucker born every minute

This book is true Westlake. Delightful humor, good story and marvelous characters. New York is the perfect setting for this story.

I have to separate my books like Graham Greene into Entertainments and Serious Lit. As far as E's go this one is funny, particularly the beginning which had me laughing while listening. Westlake has some great comic crime novels and i like returning to him. The Dortmunder series is very funny, though I wish the audio's read by Tom Parker were available here soon, he reads Dortmunder perfect.

Main character is very good.

Wyman's reading is good, though as I said, I think the Westlakes from Books on Tape that Tom Parker reads are a perfect match.

To paraphrase the Who,

Westlake always fun, and he writes serious hard crime novels as Richard Stark.

Fred Fitch is just a normal guy who is constantly swindled by nearly every grifter, con man, con woman and thief in New York City. The main character is Fred who gets sucked up in a series of situations after having received $300K following his Uncle's death.

Not quite a comedy but very funny, not quite a drama but with dramatic moements and not quite a thriller this book is an interesting meditation on a single person and his growing awareness of those people around him.

While a completely different read than American Gods, I kept thinking how similar these two books are with the fish-out-of-water-but-just-going-with-it style. I listened to this story on audiobook and thought Oliver Wyman was an excellent choice.

Whether a fan of Donald E. Westlake or not, I would highly recommend this book.

-Bill

I love Donald Westlake, but this is a dud. Main character meant to be comically thick is instead dull and unbelievable. Good reader, but keep your Westlake memories unsullied by this one.

I've been a fan of Westlake's Dortmunder books forever, and I think Oliver Wyman is an outstanding reader, so I went into this book with nothing but good expectations. What I came out of it with is...confusion & some disappointment. I knew Fred Fitch wasn't John Archibald Dortmunder, but at the beginning of the book he seems like John's spiritual cousin; another mild, likeable but sad sack, this guy on the receiving end of crime instead of the committing end. He's a mark for the Universe, a gullible sucker for any con man that comes within a mile of him. He falls for cons all the time & con men seem to smell it and practically line up at his door. And he always opens the door for them.
The book starts out reminiscent of Dortmunder in another way; it's quite funny & lighthearted and even if Fred is getting ripped of every time he turns around, it's not mean-spirited, and they're small amounts of money that don't leave you concerned that he's going to get tossed out into the street. Fifteen dollars was certainly worth more when the book is set than it does now, but Fred isn't facing financial ruin so we can laugh at his gullibility and misfortune without feeling mean.
But then Fred inherits over $300,000 from an uncle he didn't know existed (which he initially thinks is another con) and the book gradually turns darker. Some people get dead, and while it's not gory at all, there's fewer yucks when there's real corpses sitting around...tho heaven knows, as a lifelong fan of horror & murder mysteries, I'm not bothered by corpses per se. I guess what got me was the deterioration of Fred's character; he starts out knowing he's a gullible yutz and he has a sense of humor about it, a sort of amused exasperation at himself (which is shared by his friend Riley of the Bunco Squad...they've interacted so many times over the years that they've become fast friends, which is pretty funny in itself).
But Fred really gets bitter and loses his sense of humor entirely as the book progresses. Not to say I blame him, really --it seems somebody is trying to kill him, & various strange & deadly things are happening around him because of the money-- but the book just wasn't funny in the second half, maybe started turning grim about 1/3 of the way through.
If you've never read Westlake, I'd very strongly recommend not starting here; try any of the Dortmunder books (with the mammoth exception of the “Drowned Hopes” audiobook read by Arte Johnson; it is beyond hideous, past unlistenable, is so bad that all associated with it should be imprisoned). The first Dortmunder book, “The Hot Rock,” is terrific. So are the others…”Bank Shot,” “The Road to Ruin,” etc. They’re also well read, as is this one.

The premise is good, the story isn't told with the usual fun and crazy characters.