Trust Me On This is Donald E. Westlake’s take on tabloid news. Though at times funny, this novels is simply banal and for Westlake fans only.
Sara Joslyn has just been hired by a tabloid called The Weekly Galaxy. On her way to work she finds a dead body and reports it to the security guard. Nothing comes of it. Sara decides to investigate. This plot is very much background to Donald Westlake’s over the top telling of events at The Weekly Galaxy. The Galaxy has unlimited budgets and goes to extreme lengths to get the story, fake or not, and the pictures, fake or not. It is humor by exaggeration of plausible events.
The problem with Westlake’s Trust Me On This is it is both too over the top and credible to be funny. Westlake keeps adding layers to the surreal world of The Weekly Galaxy and its characters but exaggeration is not enough here to really be funny. The reader doesn’t quite buy the story the author is telling nor does he or she care.
The murder does get solved if that’s what you are worried about. It does not really matter.
Trust Me On This
Donald E Westlake
Originally published 1988
Mysterious Press 2018
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