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Outsourced

by Dave Zeltserman (Goodreads Author)

3.43 of 5 stars 3.43 · rating details · 103 ratings · 27 reviews

"a dark gem of a story... a macabre delight to read" -NPR

"You can outsource software engineering, but so far at least you can’t outsource crime writing as good as Zeltserman’s." -Boston Globe

"A small gem of crime fiction" -Booklist

"A dark, lightning-paced read" -Financial Times

Following from his ultra-noir trilogy—Small Crimes, Pariah, and Killer—is Outsourced, Dave Zeltse...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published January 18th 2011 by Serpent's Tail (first published August 12th 2010)

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Mar 28, 2011 hcelvis rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

28 Minuten bleiben den vier arbeitslosen Softwareentwicklern, eine Bank auszurauben. Ein perfekter Plan und die letzte Chance für den langsam erblindenden Programmierer Dan, für sich und seine Familie vorzusorgen. Doch auch ein perfekter Plan birgt Tücken und kann entsetzlich schief laufen.

Dave Zeltserman war selbst Softwareentwickler, und schon sind wir beim Manko dieses Krimis: 28 Minuten liest sich leicht und flüssig, wer aber Wert auf einen literarischen Schreibstil legt, wird enttäuscht. Ma...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Tim Mayer rated it 5 of 5 stars

The cover for Outsourced by Dave Zeltserman (Kindle Books) is deceptive. At first glance It appears to be a comedic novel. Or one filled with black humor in the Jim Thompson mode. You can imagine a movie version with Tom Hanks. And nothing would be further from what this novel is about.

Four out-of-work software engineers decide to rob a bank. One of them, Dan Wilson, had designed the architecture for the bank’s security system and knows exactly when the system will go down. It will go down not b...more The cover for Outsourced by Dave Zeltserman (Kindle Books) is deceptive. At first glance It appears to be a comedic novel. Or one filled with black humor in the Jim Thompson mode. You can imagine a movie version with Tom Hanks. And nothing would be further from what this novel is about.

Four out-of-work software engineers decide to rob a bank. One of them, Dan Wilson, had designed the architecture for the bank’s security system and knows exactly when the system will go down. It will go down not because of a design flaw, but because the bank decided to use an offshore company to do the coding for the system. Dan has seen the coding, knows it’s garbage, and knows the flaws. They’ve come up with the perfect plan to rob the bank and get themselves out of a financial black hole, but few plans survive contact.

Two simultaneous stories run next to the software engineers’ scheme. One is that of police detective Alex Resnick, who’s suffering from the death of his child and the divorce of his wife. Two, Viktor Petrinko, a former Russian KGB interrogator and now a mob boss of a Massachusetts town. Petrinko has been running the old “protection” racket on local store owners and Resnick is determined to put him away. The mobster also has plenty of cash and documents stashed in safe deposit boxes at the bank the software engineers are planning to rob. And they’re the prime target for the robbery.

Needless to say, all three stories are going to intersect. With disastrous results.
The actual robbery occurs toward the middle of the book. The rest of the novel deals with the aftermath. It would be too much of a spoiler to detail how the robbery goes terribly wrong. Most of the remainder of the novel centers around the mobster, police detective, and Dan Wilson, who’s traumatized by what happens.

My one criticism with this thriller is the lack of back story for all but a few of the software engineers. Most of the plot centers around Dan Wilson and his family. The other conspirators consist of Shrini Kumar, an Indian expatriate who dreads going back home and having to marry his arranged bride; Gordon, who’s pushing sixty and has issues with women, and Joel, who’s a gun enthusiast. Joel brings a friend of his into the gang, Eric, but we’re never quite sure why. Shrini is the only member who’s under fifty.

With the exception of Eric, all of these men had worked together in the past and made good money. All suffered in the tech crash after 2000. But you’re never quite sure just what they we’re doing, other than working night and day for a company that went under. I’d have like some more back story. Zeltserman has said there was more in the original manuscript, but his publisher wanted it and the social commentary toned down for the market. Someday I’d like to see the original manuscript he submitted.

This is the first kindle book and second novel I’ve read by the author. He’s now on my “Must Read” list. My standard for judging a novel is the “Pull-In” factor. If I can’t put the book down, it qualifies. And Outsourced definitely qualifies.(less)

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Jul 29, 2011 James Thane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction, suspense

Dan Wilson is a middle-aged software engineer. He's out of work; he's going blind, and then his wife gets laid off from her job as well. All in all, things are not going well.

Dan's last job of any consequence was designing the security system for a local bank. But then the penny-pinching bankers outsourced the writing of the software Dan designed to a firm in India. Dan is righteously angry and so decides to take his revenge and secure his family's future all in one fell swoop by robbing the ban...more Dan Wilson is a middle-aged software engineer. He's out of work; he's going blind, and then his wife gets laid off from her job as well. All in all, things are not going well.

Dan's last job of any consequence was designing the security system for a local bank. But then the penny-pinching bankers outsourced the writing of the software Dan designed to a firm in India. Dan is righteously angry and so decides to take his revenge and secure his family's future all in one fell swoop by robbing the bank in question.

Dan conceives a fairly ingeneous plan and recruits several of his friends to assist. They are all out of work software engineers as well and they eagerly sign on to the plan. As always happens in a book like this, things will inevitably go amiss; the law of unintended consequences will come into play, and in fairly short order, Dan has major problems.

I loved the premise of this book, but I was less satisfied with the execution. My main problem was that I didn't find any of the characters to be at all sympathetic, including Dan, whose situation should have made him enormously sympathetic. But I found that I couldn't root for him or anyone else in the book, and in the end I didn't really care what happened to any of them. In particular, the crew that Dan recruits consists of a bunch of hopeless misfits. I wouldn't think of trusting any of these guys to go along for a ride during which I planned to run a red light, let alone rob a bank.

Reading the book, I kept thinking of Donald Westlake. "Outsourced" sounds like a plot that might have worked well as one of Westlake's "Parker" series (written as Richard Stark), although if Westlake had written it, it would have been grittier and more believeable. Mainly, though, the premise of this book reminded me of Westlake's The Ax, in which the protagonist is also out of work and designs a criminal plan to save himself that is much more interesting than the one in "Outsourced."

This is not a bad book, and I'm sure a lot of readers would enjoy it more than I. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high.(less)

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Nov 18, 2010 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

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...more 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.(less)

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Dec 22, 2011 John Sheridan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Premise seemed wonderful, unemployed software engineers exploiting flawed alarm software to stage a bank robbery. Enhance your plan by only robbing safety deposit boxes belonging to local Russian crimelord while disguised as a mafia kingpin and you have a scenario where hopefully the bad guys will be too busy killing each other for anyone to investigate the robbery properly. As with Zeltsermann's other books though, this represents the thin edge of the wedge and things start to unravel pretty qu...more

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Aug 30, 2012 Benoit Lelievre rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In a perfect world, I would've given this novel 3.5 stars, but this ranking isn't available on Goodreads. It's a heist novel, more than it's about the calamities of downsizing and outsourcing, but it's a good heist novel with a plot that doesn't follow the clichés of the genre. Zelsterman spent much time following the aftermath of the heist, rather than build up to it, which I really appreciated. Consequences of crime is a big element of noir. My main issue with OUTSOURCED were the characters, w...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Melki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime

Who would ever suspect a group of geeky software engineers of pulling a bank heist?

Dan thought he'd thought of everything. The alarm was taken care of. He knew exactly what to go after. He chose a "crack team" to hold up the bank. But, there's always a loose cannon in the bunch...

When things go wrong during the robbery, (and really, when do they ever go right?), a chain of events is set into play that makes the book pretty hard to put down.

The build up to the big heist was a little slow, but th...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

The modern day scourge of the middle-aged man is being laid-off and replaced by younger hires, willing to work for less money. To top of the humiliation when the company sends those same jobs overseas and outsources them to workers in Asia or Central America then the felling on worthlessness is complete. In fact it makes you want to do something to stick it to the man!
Dan was luckier than most. At least he had managed to scrape together a three-month contract building a security system for a loc...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, literary, suspense, contemporary-fiction

A wicked little book in which an outsourced, out-of-work, software engineer cooks up a plan to use his software skills to rob a bank. The plan seems to be foolproof - until the human factor crops up in the middle of the heist. People who you thought you knew do unexpected things under pressure - like shoot a bank clerk. Then you, as you become more desperate, find you can lie and lie and lie to try to avoid being caught.

Worthwhile reading about the pressures of contemporary society.

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Feb 05, 2012 Suzanne Freeman rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you're interested in a fast paced afternoon read that will keep you on your toes and get you thinking, this is it. Dan Wilson is a middle-aged, middle-class software engineer who has been laid off after 25 years at the same company -- along with a few of his friends. After two years of no jobs, they decide to rob a bank. This is NOT a caper book. It's literature disguised as thriller. Well written, VERY well thought out, and extremely thought provoking. I highly recommend.

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Jan 13, 2011 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

Good read. It is about a group of software engineers who can't get jobs and decide to rob a bank. Disclaimer: Dave Zeltserman is a friend of mine. We workwd together as engineers and are still friends. This category of book is noir thriller/suspense. It is the third book of dave's that I've read. This is the best of the ones I've read. Dave has whom a lot of awards bur is still a struggling novelist so throw Dave a bone and buy one of his books!!!

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Jan 16, 2011 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: noirboiled

Dan Wilson is out of work and on the verge of losing his eyesight. With a mortgage to pay and a family to support, he is an ordinary guy desperate for money. He conceives a can't-miss bank heist, enlists the help of some friends, and then--surprise!--things don't go exactly as planned. Dave Zeltserman cleverly and effectively engineers the plot with a steady supply of action and surprises. In sum, Outsourced is thoroughly entertaining noir in a traditional vein.

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Jun 17, 2013 Denton rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was horrible. It read like an over extemporized script of a bad movie with a plot twist that was predictable and boring. It took me two weeks to get through this tedious excuse for a novel and I actually stopped caring about what was going to happen next around chapter 17. At this point I was forcing myself to get through the chapters and often found myself putting the book down to browse magazines and catalogs. Go ahead and read it if you like crime novels, but this is not very intere...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Elaine Mayes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Several software engineers in their late middle years have their jobs outsourced and can't find new ones. They plan a bank heist and it all goes downhill from there. You'll think that you've read this one before and then Zeltserman introduces twists and you're off the beaten path. This is a good read for those who like dark crime novels.

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 1 of 5 stars

Not very good. Poorly realised characters, particularly bad dialogue, and while presenting both the cops and the robbers viewpoints was brave, it just didn't work. I don't think I'll be bothering with any others by this author, assuming I can even remember the name in a week's time.

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Mar 18, 2011 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Another fine outing by Zeltserman. First 50 pages ease into the plot, but don't worry, no words are wasted and the feelings and motivations laid out early on pay off later as the plots start to converge and the ingenious robbery scheme starts to off the rails. If you read any Zeltserman before you know no one is getting off easy and everyone is getting what they deserve.

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May 15, 2011 Casey Brown rated it 2 of 5 stars

Outsourcing is both how Dan lost his job and the source of a loophole he plans to exploit in the security system at the bank where he was recently contracted to architect (not program) a new security system. After months of job hunting, Dan is backed into a corner without income and without benefits. Engaging old friends and colleagues from the software industry to rob untraceable cash from the deposit boxes of a local gangster, Dan plots an impenetrable heist with the exception of the human fac...more

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Apr 17, 2011 Lucien Sims rated it 1 of 5 stars

All the suspense of a b-grade 90 minute action film, packed into several hundred pages of average writing. The sobbing scene at the end? Eye rolling material.

I expected much better given all the positive reviews.

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Oct 14, 2012 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-thriller-crime

A few out-of-work software engineers plan a bank robbery and, of course, everything goes wrong. Very entertaining in an Office Space type of way.

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Aug 03, 2011 Don rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like his other books (which I've enjoyed) this one is super violent. People's actions are hard to swallow. The ending exceeded my expectations.

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May 09, 2011 Ben Hamilton rated it 2 of 5 stars

Got very involved in the story and then it just ends. If you like books with clear endings, do not read this one.

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Mar 03, 2011 Doug rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-mystery

I liked this quite a bit -- especially how desperation drives a domesticated white collar software developer to crime (a heist). Thus far on Dave Zeltserman, I liked SMALL CRIMES more, but this book is pretty strong, too.

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Sep 14, 2010 Barbara Duvoisin marked it as to-read

FT book review summer/fall 2010. seems interesting.

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Mar 02, 2011 Ernest Barteldes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read my review here

http://lit.newcity.com/2011/02/17/fic...

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Sep 14, 2011 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fast paced bank heist with a GREAT cast of (underperformer) characters getting what's theirs! Love the writing style and short chapters to move along the action. Nice cutting between plot points until it all wraps up!

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Mar 16, 2012 James Mackay rated it 3 of 5 stars

A very clever little heist novel, that taps into the current economic malaise effectively.

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Sep 24, 2012 Rochelle rated it 2 of 5 stars

Action story, not much development of characters , some violence and it seems to have been written with the view of a movie offer.

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Jun 16, 2013 Pat marked it as to-read

Jun 16, 2013 Joseph Humphries rated it 4 of 5 stars

May 30, 2013 andeeeeee rated it 2 of 5 stars

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About Dave Zeltserman

Shamus Award winner for Julius Katz. Ellery Queen's Readers Choice Award winner for 'Archie's Been Framed'. Small Crimes named by NPR as one of the 5 best crime and mystery novels of 2008, Washington Post naming it also as one of the best novels of 2008. Pariah named by the Washington Post as one of the best books of 2009. The Caretaker of Lorne Field (2010) shortlisted by American Library Associa...more

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