SOURCE: See, Carolyn. “The Artful Codger.” Washington Post Book World (26 November 2000): X7.

In the following review, See applauds Begley's characterizations and asserts that in Schmidt Delivered readers experience conflicting feelings regarding the protagonist.

The only thing worse than being bound and gagged by life, tied down by hundreds of business and familial obligations, is to be cut loose from them entirely. Albert Schmidt, former husband of a successful literary agent, father to a loved but difficult daughter, and senior partner in a hot-shot law firm [in Schmidt Delivered], is a widower now, retired to the Hamptons, having been forced out of that law firm by his obnoxious son-in-law. Schmidt is rich, not ultra-rich like the billionaire Egyptian neighbor who wants to be his new best friend, but rich with fairly old, Anglo-Saxon money. Enough—more than enough—money.

But Schmidt is so tweaked—the cosmos has been pinching...