James and Skip are best friends and roommates. Skip has a pretty good job at a security company and James has a part-time job at a Crab House restaurant. So, Skip buys the beer. Their apartment is run down and sparsely furnished in a run-down neighborhood in a run-down part of town. Skip’s girlfriend, Emily, is the daughter of a wealthy family and Skip dreams of making it big, earning lots of money and respect to become worthy of Em. Finally, an opportunity comes up when Skip lands a job for the security company that involves a big alarm installation with cameras, motion detectors, electronic access doors, smoke alarms, etc., for a big company that is to perform a big software installation for the US Defense Department.
On top of getting a nice commission for the job Skip is offered another $10,000 for pretending to be the boyfriend of one of the company officers to camouflage the affair she is having with the CEO of the company. The man’s wife is suspicious and Skip just needs to act the boyfriend and leave his car outside the girl’s apartment a couple of times a week so the wife will believe the two of them are romancing and convincing her that her husband is not involved. This is not a hard thing for Skip to do.
Then when the CEO’s wife corners Skip and offers him another %5,000 to plant a recording device in her husband’s office so she can find out what he is doing Skip feels like he will soon be rolling in the dough. But all of this is getting a bit much for Skip and his limited skills so he calls on James, who knows people. James manages to get a friend to loan them a camera/recorder device that looks and functions like a smoke detector which they plant in the office. But when they listen to the recording Skip realizes that he can’t give this to the wife because it would reveal the fake boyfriend relationship with the other girl and result in no money and maybe even losing the security job.
Also, the chief of security for the company is following them around off job. Skip lets Em in on what is happening. Skip, Em and James realize that things are not what they seem when the company vice president is killed and two other employees disappear. Something is going on and Skip determines to find out what. The more they dig the more fishy the job looks. The Chinese government is involved. Then when they find out that the company is to get the codes to the DOD security system for the testing of the software prior to delivery to the government they realize that some serious espionage is planned.
Skip continues to sneak around listening in on conversations eventually arousing the suspicion of the bad guys. Skip and James’ apartment is shot up one night as a warning but that only makes the boys more determined. They finally track down the enemy spies but before they can do anything Em is taken captive. The Chinese leader demands that Skip turn over the disk recording from the CEO’s office in return for freeing Em. When Skip arrives to make the trade they are double-crossed and set up to die in a huge explosion. But Skip is a hero, dying in the process of saving Em and James.
“Stuff to Spy for” is a very humorous adventure/spy tale. Bruns tells the story well and makes the characters come alive. We readers could imagine being in that situation and feeling just the same feelings as Skip and Em. It is a fine story and gets a 7 of 10 on the Weaver meter.
