Fri 2 Jan 2009
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS review: DONALD W. WESTLAKE – God Save the Mark.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Authors , Reviews[3] Comments
DONALD E. WESTLAKE – God Save the Mark.
Random House, hardcover, 1967. Paperback reprint: Signet, 1968, several printings; Charter, 1979; Mysterious Press, 1987. Hardcover reprint: Forge, 2004.
God Save the Mark, for which Westlake received a much deserved MWA Best Novel Edgar in 1968, is a comedy whodunit with barely restrained elements of slapstick — a type of book no one in the world has done better than Westlake.
Its narrator and bumbling hero is Fred Fitch, a mark among marks; i.e., an easy victim, a ready subject for the practices of confidence men; i.e., the perfect sucker. Fred Fitch has more fake receipts, phony bills of sale, and counterfeit sweepstakes tickets than any man alive. He has even purchased a “money machine,” which is on a par with shelling out good hard cash for a piece of the Brooklyn Bridge.
As the jacket blurb says, “Every itinerant grifter, hypster, bunk artist, short-conner, amuser, shearer, shortchanger, green-goods worker, penny-weighter, ring-dropper and yentzer to hit New York considers his trip incomplete until he’s also hit Fred Fitch. He’s sort of the con-man’s version of Go; pass Fred Fitch, collect two hundred dollars, and move on.”
But Fred’s earlier problems seem minor compared to those he encounters after a relative he didn’t know he had, the mysterious Uncle Matt, is killed (murdered, in fact) and he is willed $300,000.
First of all, every grifter, hypster, bunk artist, etc., seems bent on relieving Fred of some or all of that hefty bequest; second and by no means least of all, the person or persons unknown who bumped off Uncle Matt is or are now trying to bump off Fred.
The characters he meets as he tries to find out what is going on include a stripper named Gertie Divine, the Body Secular; a lawyer named Goodkind; an elusive crook named Gus Ricovic; a couple of cops called Steve and Ralph; a needle-happy doctor named Osbertson; and a former partner of Uncle Matt’s named Professor Kilroy.
Add to them the wackiest chase sequences this side of a Mel Brooks movie, and you have — or will have — any number of chuckles, laughs, and guffaws. Anybody who doesn’t find this novel at least semi-hilarious probably wouldn’t crack a smile at a politician’s wake.
Two of Westlake’s other novels in this same vein are likewise fast, funny, and fun: The Busy Body (1966) and The Spy in the Ointment (1966). Two more — Who Stole Sassi Manoon? (1969) and Somebody Owes Me Money (1969) — are less successful (Sassi Manoon, in fact, may be Westlake’s worst novel), which is no doubt the reason he turned to other types of comic suspense.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:29 am
This is indeed a fine book, though not as hilarious in my memory as this review makes it to be. What impressed me most was how tightly plotted it was under the surface zaniness.
Stanley Ellin must have remembered it when he wrote his own variation on the poisoned inheritance, The Valentine Estate; both books have a lot in common though Ellin’s version is predictably less humorous and more convoluted.
God Save The Mark made history when winning the Best Novel Edgar since it was the first American laureate in almost a decade – the last Yankee to have taken the award home was Stanley Ellin (again) in 1959 for The Eighth Circle.
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I can’t think of anything that varies from person to person more than anything else regarding a book or a movie is how funny they think it is. It’s something that can’t be quantified.
Even so, I think you put your finger on something, Xavier. A good part of what makes Westlake funny is his perfect timing, or as you expressed it, the how tight his plotting is.
That and how wonderfully human his characters are. As flawed as the best of us, and as such, easily recognized by any of us.
You’re also right about the Edgar awards. Here’s the list, from Ellin to Westlake:
1959 Stanley Ellin
1960 Celia Fremlin
1961 Julian Symonds
1962 J. J. Marric
1963 Ellis Peters
1964 Eric Ambler
1965 John le Carre
1966 Adam Hall
1967 Nicolas Freeling
1968 Donald E. Westlake
Here’s a great quiz. I deliberately left out the titles of the books. Can anyone name them, without looking it up?
This is a test that, personally, I know I’d flunk.
— Steve
January 4th, 2009 at 7:17 am
To keep with Edgar trivia, Westlake was by the time he won the youngest writer ever to win the Best Novel award, being only 35; his record would be beaten the following year by 26-year old Jeffery Hudson (a pseudonym for one Michael Crichton who enjoyed some success afterwards under his real name).