God Save the Mark is an excellent example of Westlake's adroitness with the first-person narrative. By restricting the reader's knowledge to that of the protagonist's, he builds suspense, increases the sense of identification with Fitch and keeps his authorial eye focused upon the significant events of the plot. The one major disadvantage of this approach is that Fitch has to actually encounter everyone and everything of importance in the book, and in less practiced hands this might seem unbearably manipulative; but as Westlake handles it, Fitch's increasingly frenetic activity is believably motivated by unfolding plot developments and never seems forced or based upon gratuitous coincidence. Westlake's skill at plotting is often commented upon by reviewers, and in God Save the Mark it can be observed at the service of a first-person mystery narrative fully worthy of the technique's HammettChandler origins.