Outsourced
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Review
"A gem of crime fiction" --Booklist Booklist
"A dark, lightening-paced read" --Financial Times
"Add this to your holiday reading list for a piece of escapism." --Morning Star
"Outsourced is a dryly witty take on the heist caper genre... fast-paced action romp" --London Times
"finely paced, witty and stylish take on the heist caper novel" --The Australian
"A dark, lightening-paced read" --Financial Times
"Add this to your holiday reading list for a piece of escapism." --Morning Star
"Outsourced is a dryly witty take on the heist caper genre... fast-paced action romp" --London Times
"finely paced, witty and stylish take on the heist caper novel" --The Australian
Book Description
Technology professionals turn their skills to criminality for the heist of a lifetime
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Unlike most reviewers, I wasn't a huge fan of Zeltserman's debut (Small Crimes) -- or rather, I found it kind of so-so, trying a little too hard to hit all the noir touchpoints. I got sent his next books (Pariah and Killer) but since I hadn't really enjoyed his first, couldn't be bothered to pick either up. But I've for a weakness for heist stories, so when I was sent this fourth book, I was intrigued enough to give it thirty pages to suck me in. As in Small Crimes, we meet a middle-aged family man who's in a bad spot and feels like he has to take desperate measures to survive. In this case, the guy is an unemployed computer programmer whose career has foundered on the shoals of IT overseas outsourcing and thinly veiled age discrimination. But the real problem is that he has no health insurance and a rapidly deteriorating eye condition that will leave him blind inside a year if left untreated.
Facing a mounting pile of bills and blindness, he gets together with former colleagues and cooks up a perfect plan to rob a bank. Alas, as all good crooks know, the plan is only as good as the people executing it. And unfortunately, his team of unemployed IT dudes is pretty shaky: there's a compound-dwelling libertarian gun nut, a socially maladjusted fat dude who creeps women out, and then an even more shady friend of a friend is added at the last moment. Naturally, things don't go quite as planned, and naturally, some people get killed in what was supposed to be a totally victimless crime. Things only proceed to get even more pear-shaped, as a Russian gangster, the Italian mob, the local cops, and the FBI all attempt to figure out who pulled off the heist.
Just as in Small Crimes, the book's biggest strength is the author's ability to get into the protagonist's head and show his guilt over lying to his wife and the fear that his formerly middle-class family will implode. The desperation that drives the action is palpable and it's hard not to imagine oneself in the protagonist's shoes. However, other elements, such as the Russian mobsters and the ruthless libertarian, are too over the top and tonally different from the protagonist's plight to work. The climax is a microcosm of what's wrong with the book: a rapidly mounting body count and action-movie antics juxtaposed with an emotionally resonant and realistically bleak final scene.
Facing a mounting pile of bills and blindness, he gets together with former colleagues and cooks up a perfect plan to rob a bank. Alas, as all good crooks know, the plan is only as good as the people executing it. And unfortunately, his team of unemployed IT dudes is pretty shaky: there's a compound-dwelling libertarian gun nut, a socially maladjusted fat dude who creeps women out, and then an even more shady friend of a friend is added at the last moment. Naturally, things don't go quite as planned, and naturally, some people get killed in what was supposed to be a totally victimless crime. Things only proceed to get even more pear-shaped, as a Russian gangster, the Italian mob, the local cops, and the FBI all attempt to figure out who pulled off the heist.
Just as in Small Crimes, the book's biggest strength is the author's ability to get into the protagonist's head and show his guilt over lying to his wife and the fear that his formerly middle-class family will implode. The desperation that drives the action is palpable and it's hard not to imagine oneself in the protagonist's shoes. However, other elements, such as the Russian mobsters and the ruthless libertarian, are too over the top and tonally different from the protagonist's plight to work. The climax is a microcosm of what's wrong with the book: a rapidly mounting body count and action-movie antics juxtaposed with an emotionally resonant and realistically bleak final scene.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not very good. Poorly realised characters, particularly bad dialogue, and while presenting both the cops and the robbers viewpoints was a brave move, it just didn't work. I don't think I'll be bothering with any others by this author. The synopsis promises a much more interesting story than the one that's really on offer. Which I suppose is the point of synopses!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Another winner from Zeltserman
4 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback
Dave Zeltserman's newest (yes, the prolific bastard puts out like three a year) is OUTSOURCED. It's a crime/heist novel about Dan, a laid off software engineer. At 48 years old, his re-hire prospects are grim, and he's slowly losing his sight (retinitis pigmentosa) to boot. Creeping ever closer to defaulting on his mortgage, and desperate to provide for his family, he schemes to rob a bank, or more specifically, to rob the safety deposit boxes that belong to a reputed Russian mobster. Dan gets a bunch of his has-been friends in on the clumsy yet clever caper, and stuff goes way wrong, quickly.
OUTSOURCED is brilliantly paced and reminiscent of A SIMPLE PLAN with the supposed non-criminals slowly descending into desperation and violence, and Zeltserman gives the characters (Dan, in particularly) a kind of heartbreaking vulnerability as well. Another great crime novel from Zeltserman.
If we're all still around and reading books 20-30 years from now, I can totally envision the next generation of crime/noir readers-the ones discovering and raving about Chandler and Hammet-finding all of Zelterman's books too, and greedily inhaling them.
OUTSOURCED is brilliantly paced and reminiscent of A SIMPLE PLAN with the supposed non-criminals slowly descending into desperation and violence, and Zeltserman gives the characters (Dan, in particularly) a kind of heartbreaking vulnerability as well. Another great crime novel from Zeltserman.
If we're all still around and reading books 20-30 years from now, I can totally envision the next generation of crime/noir readers-the ones discovering and raving about Chandler and Hammet-finding all of Zelterman's books too, and greedily inhaling them.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Employers Say You're Too Old for the Workforce, Try Robbing Safety Deposit Boxes at the Bank Instead!
25 Oct 2010
Format:Kindle Edition
This is the second Zeltserman novel I've read, the previous being Small Crimes. This isn't quite as good as that one but it's still a great read. Basically it's the tale of an ageing man named Dan Wilson, he believes he's still at the top of his game but his last and every other IT employer isn't interested in hiring him anymore. They either go for younger staff or outsource their IT needs to India. Dan's eyesight is deteriorating as well, if he had a job he could do something about it but now that he's unemployed he can't even afford the bills and his wife is pressuring him to sell their house. The future looks bleak, however Dan has a plan. A bank that gave him a few months temporary work in the past hired Indian staff to finish the job on their security system. Dan knows the system shuts down for 28 minutes and he knows the bank staff don't know this so will be contempt to just press the alarm button thinking the police will be waiting outside when he exits. It should just be a simple matter of walking in with a couple of other unemployed previous colleagues who are also on the scrapheap, and a few guns of course, then empty the safety deposit boxes of one mafia boss and frame another to throw the police of their trail. Of course a real life robbery doesn't go as easily as you imagine, especially if you don't choose your team carefully. Those familiar with Zeltserman's other books know the violence to expect on the pages, and Outsourced is no exception.
Of course once you've read this, if you have't already done so you should also check out the ultimate solution to being retrenched and trying to land a job with Donald E Westlake's classic The Ax.
Of course once you've read this, if you have't already done so you should also check out the ultimate solution to being retrenched and trying to land a job with Donald E Westlake's classic The Ax.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
exciting amateur criminal Noir
9 Feb 2011
Format:Paperback
In New England software engineers Dan and Shrini are fired when their positions are outsourced to India. Middle aged Dan worries for his family as he only brings small change as a freelance contractor and his wife Carol works as a legal assistant though her hours have been cut. He also knows he needs health insurance as he is going blind unless he has surgery. Shrini finds it ironic that he cannot score work in the States, but once home in India will receive outsourcing offers from the same companies who rejected him.
After working on a bank security program in which the safety protocols were developed extremely poorly overseas, Dan sees the major flaw. He and Shrini work on a plan to rob the bank. Dan asks his former mentor out of work Joel to join the team, which he reluctantly does, but insists on Eric be on their heist unit so the latter can supply untraceable weapons. The final player is strange Gordon. The scheme is perfect on paper but the execution not so as people die. As the Feds, local cops led by Detective Resnick, and former KGB turned mobster Petrenko search for the money, the thieves struggle with each other and their fears that their families will learn of their crime caper.
Dan is the center of this crime caper as an upper middle class good citizen whose life has imploded due to Outsourcing of his job. Ironically the quality of work is irrelevant to the software companies as that takes away from the bottom line leading to the middle aged men (and the younger Shrini) being fired and able to draw up the perfect plan. Readers will feel for Dan. Although Petrenko and several of Dan's cronies are more caricatures seemingly employed to enable the protagonist's woes to stand out further, fans will enjoy this exciting amateur criminal Noir with a powerful poignant coda while the body count will remind readers of the line "War, friend only to the undertaker" from Edwin Starr's War.
Harriet Klausner
After working on a bank security program in which the safety protocols were developed extremely poorly overseas, Dan sees the major flaw. He and Shrini work on a plan to rob the bank. Dan asks his former mentor out of work Joel to join the team, which he reluctantly does, but insists on Eric be on their heist unit so the latter can supply untraceable weapons. The final player is strange Gordon. The scheme is perfect on paper but the execution not so as people die. As the Feds, local cops led by Detective Resnick, and former KGB turned mobster Petrenko search for the money, the thieves struggle with each other and their fears that their families will learn of their crime caper.
Dan is the center of this crime caper as an upper middle class good citizen whose life has imploded due to Outsourcing of his job. Ironically the quality of work is irrelevant to the software companies as that takes away from the bottom line leading to the middle aged men (and the younger Shrini) being fired and able to draw up the perfect plan. Readers will feel for Dan. Although Petrenko and several of Dan's cronies are more caricatures seemingly employed to enable the protagonist's woes to stand out further, fans will enjoy this exciting amateur criminal Noir with a powerful poignant coda while the body count will remind readers of the line "War, friend only to the undertaker" from Edwin Starr's War.
Harriet Klausner
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