WCF chokes on properties with no "set ". Any workaround?

If you only have a getter, why do you need to serialize the property at all. It seems like you could remove the DataMember attribute for the read-only property, and the serializer would just ignore the property.

Even if you dont need to update the value, the setter is used by the WCFSerializer to deserialize the object (and re-set the value).

This SO is what you are after: WCF DataContracts

Give Message a public getter but protected setter, so that only subclasses (and the DataContractSerializer, because it cheats :) may modify the value.

[DataMember(Name = "PropertyName")]
public string PropertyName
{
    get
    {
        return "";
    }
    private set
    { }
}