Espionage

With Canceled Czech, I have read, or listened to, all of the Evan Tanner mysteries. They really are a lot of fun. As usual, Tanner manages to make the best of terribly difficult situations by utilizing the services of friends he has acquired by belonging to every crackpot association or group in the world. He has been assigned by a super-secret U.S. Government agency to smuggle Janos Kotachek, a rather nasty Nazi who would like nothing better than to resurrect the Third Reich, out of a Czech prison, where he has been tried and sentenced to hang. It appears Kotachek was an invaluable source of information for the U.S. Government and they want him alive so they can continue to tap that resource. Fortunately for Tanner, Kotachek is suffering from a peculiar disease that makes him catatonic when exposed to strobe lights or severe shocks. This enables Tanner to enlist the aid of an Israeli hit squad also sent to assassinate Kotachek. Others in his little team include a voluptuous young German girl, the perfect Aryan offspring of a Nazi dwarf and his hideous wife, some Serbo-Croatian freedom fighters, a scientist who uses a Mobius strip to prove the earth flat, and a coffin to succeed in his assignment and gain $500,000 for his pet lost causes. He also solves a moral dilemma in a particularly appropriate and satisfying manner. But you’ll have to read or listen to the book to find out how. ( )

"Author of Eight Million Ways to Die" blares the cover of the Jove edition I read -- a 1980s reissue -- not mentioning that this isn't Block in the noirish mode that has made him so renowned but a relic of the years when he was apparently still trying to find his voice . . . and his commercial audience. The Canceled Czech is a piece of fluff -- a spy caper distinguished from so many others of its era solely through being far better written than most, and with a gimmick or two; it's as if Ian Fleming and Donald E. Westlake had collaborated in an attempt to write a Quiller novel, to an effect that's quite often fine but sometimes uncomfortable.

Evan Tanner suffered an injury while serving in Korea that eliminated his brain's "sleep centre" (yeah, right); he thus has 50% more time than the rest of us to have fun exploring the world of conspiracy theorists and crank causes. These are connections he puts to good use in his occasional assignments on behalf of a US Government agency so secret it doesn't have a name -- not even a name you'd have to be killed if anyone told you it. This time he's been sent to rescue a disgusting old Nazi from jail, trial and inevitable execution in Prague, because that old Nazi, Kotacek, is unknowingly of greater use to the US if kept alive rather than surrendered to the gallows. So off goes polyglot Evan (plenty of time to learn languages if you never sleep) and -- with the aid of a nymphomaniac neo-Nazi and a bunch of bumbling Stern Gangers -- springs Kotacek from the jug and spirits him out through the Iron Curtain. There's no spoiler there because it's obvious from the outset that this is going to be the outcome; the book's surprises come in the twists and wrinkles of the plot to achieve that outcome. I giggled a few times; I kept turning the pages happily enough; this time next year I may accidentally pick up the book without realizing I've read it before . . . ( )

One of the weaker Tanner mysteries -- there's a weird thread of sexism running through this, and the Nazi subplot clearly makes the author uncomfortable. None of the characters (except perhaps Greta) seem to be having much fun, and the minor characters get short shrift as well. (Ferenc! Why does Ferenc get almost no screen time? I love Ferenc!) ( )

The second in Block's Evan Tanner series, and by far the winner of the bunch. It has everything that made the series so funny, from international engagement with True Believers in Great Causes to, of course, Nazis.