|
Noir News |
|
The Literature |
|
Crime |
|
Miscellany |
|
Guestbook |
|
Search Noirnovels |
|
|
NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
Money For Nothing
Reviewed By Steve Nester Donald Westlake has written over fifty books in his career, more books than the average American will read after graduating from high school. If one wants to become familiar with the Westlake oeuvre, the latest, Money for Nothing, is a pretty good place to start. For seven years Josh Redmont has been receiving $1000 a month, deposited into his checking by an unknown source. Redmont gladly accepts the money without questioning its source. Eventually, Josh will have to earn it. After the fall of the Soviet Republic, a former Russian spy in charge of recruitment has been embezzling money and has placed it in the accounts of several sleeper spies, agents whose services will one day be called upon. These sleepers are unsuspecting Americans. But this being embezzlement, Ellois Nimrin doesn?t expect his private retirement accounts to be accessed for any nefarious deeds of the Evil Empire. These sleepers, he believes, will never be woken. In fact, they don?t even know they?re asleep. When a stranger tells Josh that he is now active, it?s payback time. Josh must now help some free-lance Russian agents assassinate the leader of a former soviet republic during a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Josh, Nimrin, and a third ?sleeper?, an East Village existential theater producer named Robbie, must play along to keep their lives out of danger while foiling the assassination. With the fall of the USSR and the death of the spy novel as we once knew it, Westlake had made the transition gracefully. Money for Nothing is the perfect antidote for too much of the philosophical heaviness of Graham Green and a vacation from the techno-worship of Tom Clancy. One won?t find one calling one?s faith into question nor will there be a quiz on the latest NATO armament. As a satire, Money for Nothing skewers American greed and complacency, as well as the spy genre in general and politics in particular. Anyone who balks over reading books by popular best-selling authors would be making a mistake by ignoring this, or anything else, written by Donald Westlake. |
|
Add a review |
|
|