Get Real by Donald E. Westlake
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The satire on how TV people script the so-called "reality shows" and how extensively rehearsed these "spontaneous" shows are seems to be the best feature of Donald Westlake's "Get Real". Yet I would have to be out of my mind to believe that anything shown on TV has much connection with reality, so I do not find the satire particularly funny. There is not much else in the novel.

"Get Real" is the last novel in the Dortmunder series (it was published posthumously in 2009). The premise of the plot is that TV producers want to film Dortmunder and his team while they are stealing something. Obviously, the guys in the team plan to take advantage of the idea and scheme to execute their own heist, quite separate from the one that is being filmed. This might be quite a clever setup for the novel, but it disappointingly fizzles towards the end.

This is my second novel by Mr. Westlake; I quite liked "The Ax", which I review here . "Get Real" is clearly inferior to that non-series book. At least the novel is a very fast read, which allowed me to get done with it in less than three hours and move on to hopefully more interesting books.

One and a quarter stars.


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