Westlake, Donald E.: God Save the Mark

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TWEETABLE REVIEW: 3.5* Gullible 31-year-old Fred Fitch inherits trouble when a murdered uncle leaves him 500 grand. Fun but forgettable. https://www.book-blog.com/2012/06/westlake-donald-e-god-save-the-mark.html

The "mark" of Donald Westlake's title is Fred Fitch, a mild-mannered thirty-one-year-old who may be the most gullible man in the world. New York City as here portrayed is crawling with con men (or was crawling with them in the sixties, when the book was first published), and all of them seem to intutively recognize Fred as an easy target. He is cheated out of money sometimes several times a day--by door-to-door Bible salesmen or fake policemen, for example--only recognizing after the fact that he's been deceived yet again. So when Fred inherits half a million dollars from an uncle he never knew he had, he becomes an even more attractive target, and not only to con men. The experience makes Fred more wary, at long last, but to the point of paranoia: he's not sure whether he can trust anyone, including the real policeman to whom he's been reporting the daily cons perpetrated against him. When a new acquaintance is kidnapped, Fred tries to figure out who's behind her disappearance by solving his uncle's murder, an occupation that's likely to make a corpse of him as well.

God Save the Mark is a clever book, both because of its storyline and its writing style, which is often playful. It becomes a bit tedious after a while, though, so that I wasn't unhappy to see it end. A fun but forgettable read.