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Evan Tanner #4

Two For Tanner

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Secret agent Evan Tanner journeys to the jungles of Thailand in a desperate attempt to rescue a lovely jazz singer from the vicious guerrilla band that kidnapped her

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1985

54 people are currently reading
237 people want to read

About the author

Lawrence Block

767 books2,979 followers
Lawrence Block has been writing crime, mystery, and suspense fiction for more than half a century. He has published in excess (oh, wretched excess!) of 100 books, and no end of short stories.

Born in Buffalo, N.Y., LB attended Antioch College, but left before completing his studies; school authorities advised him that they felt he’d be happier elsewhere, and he thought this was remarkably perceptive of them.

His earliest work, published pseudonymously in the late 1950s, was mostly in the field of midcentury erotica, an apprenticeship he shared with Donald E. Westlake and Robert Silverberg. The first time Lawrence Block’s name appeared in print was when his short story “You Can’t Lose” was published in the February 1958 issue of Manhunt. The first book published under his own name was Mona (1961); it was reissued several times over the years, once as Sweet Slow Death. In 2005 it became the first offering from Hard Case Crime, and bore for the first time LB’s original title, Grifter’s Game.

LB is best known for his series characters, including cop-turned-private investigator Matthew Scudder, gentleman burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, globe-trotting insomniac Evan Tanner, and introspective assassin Keller.

Because one name is never enough, LB has also published under pseudonyms including Jill Emerson, John Warren Wells, Lesley Evans, and Anne Campbell Clarke.

LB’s magazine appearances include American Heritage, Redbook, Playboy, Linn’s Stamp News, Cosmopolitan, GQ, and The New York Times. His monthly instructional column ran in Writer’s Digest for 14 years, and led to a string of books for writers, including the classics Telling Lies for Fun & Profit and The Liar’s Bible. He has also written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights.

Several of LB’s books have been filmed. The latest, A Walk Among the Tombstones, stars Liam Neeson as Matthew Scudder and is scheduled for release in September, 2014.

LB is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each, and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK). He’s also been honored with the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award from Mystery Ink magazine and the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer for Lifetime Achievement in the short story. In France, he has been proclaimed a Grand Maitre du Roman Noir and has twice been awarded the Societe 813 trophy. He has been a guest of honor at Bouchercon and at book fairs and mystery festivals in France, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and Taiwan. As if that were not enough, he was also presented with the key to the city of Muncie, Indiana. (But as soon as he left, they changed the locks.)

LB and his wife Lynne are enthusiastic New Yorkers and relentless world travelers; the two are members of the Travelers Century Club, and have visited around 160 countries.

He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

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5 stars
92 (18%)
4 stars
184 (37%)
3 stars
175 (36%)
2 stars
26 (5%)
1 star
9 (1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
6,204 reviews80 followers
April 19, 2019
Tanner goes into the jungle undercover as a butterfly collector, only to get captured and put in a small cage by the VC. From there, he has to escape and go on about his caper.

Very 1960's. I've never really been able to warm up to Tanner much.
Profile Image for Dave.
3,657 reviews450 followers
June 24, 2024
Book four in Block’s Evan Tanner espionage series was originally published as Two for Tanner in 1967 and then re-titled The Scoreless Thai on republication. Tanner is sort of a spoof on the James Bond franchise. Tanner, who took some shrapnel in Korea, has lost his sleep center in his brain, doesn’t sleep, earns a living ghost-writing thesis papers for college students in New York, and is sort of a secret agent – sort of, in the sense that, he has never really been vetted and hired, but no one really knows that. More often than not, he sets off on his own adventures for his own reasons, stumbling sort of over official policy.

In New York, he has been dating jazz-singing, London-educated, Kenyan-born Tuppence, who he met at a Back to Africa meeting in New York. Tanner attends every meeting and receives every subversive newsletter he can correspond to. It is interesting reading for an insomniac and it offers him a wide variety of connections around the world. Anyway, back to Tuppence, who, with her jazz band, goes to Bangkok to play a royal concert for the King of Thailand (sort of like Anna in the King and I, but a bit different), and vanishes along with the crown jewels (literally) of Thailand. Tanner receives a cryptic telegram from Tuppence and decides he must play knight-errant and rescue her.

Nevertheless, as luck would have it, Tanner is promptly captured by guerillas – this is Southeast Asia in 1968 – and placed in a cage hoisted above the jungle floor awaiting his execution. He, though, has apparently one friend there- a local – who confides in Tanner that he has never had a woman and only joined up for the promise of meeting foxy guerilla chicks in the southeast Asian jungle. Tanner promptly promises this young man – Dhang- that he will make all the proper introductions to women and that Dhang will have his golden opportunity to make love to a woman and that promise gets Tanner help.

What follows, of course, is a slapstick comedy with Dhang ever hoping to have a chance with a woman, but always, just always falling short of success in that endeavor. So this odd couple marches through the humid jungle in search of Tuppence to rescue her before the Queen orders her head chopped off.

Comedy also rears its head in the form of one Barclay Houghton Hewlitt, who decides when Tanner arrives in Bangkok, that he will be Tanner’s local contact and promptly and most assuredly stays in Tanner’s way.

It would not do to fail to note that this novel was published in 1968 during the heart of the Vietnam War and there are episodes with Tanner blundering into the middle of the battle in a North Vietnamese Tank trying to avoid being shot by American planes and to avoid shooting back. So you get a bit of a taste of the war-strewn chaos he had blundered into.
Profile Image for Michael.
598 reviews123 followers
May 19, 2025
OK, if you had a singer-girlfriend who scored a gig in Thailand, but once there, was accused of stealing the crown jewels from the King of Siam and then was kidnapped by Laotian guerrillas at the height to the Vietnam war, would you leave New York City to rescue her? Me neither, but fortunately for us readers, Evan Tanner does.

This is the fourth book in the Tanner series. The first two novels were pretty good, but something went terribly wrong in the third one. I barely finished it. However, Lawrence Block hits his stride again in this installment and I found it very entertaining. These stories are a spoof on James Bond infused with Block's dry wit which I find delightful.

If you're interested, I suggest you read the first book ([book:The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep) first since this book assumes you know what's been going on in the preceding novels.
Profile Image for Kevin Findley.
Author 14 books12 followers
January 19, 2019
This is the first Tanner novel I've read, perhaps I need to read them in order.

Let's see, dead parents? Check. Traumatic injury that gives the protagonist special abilities? Check.

I don't know, perhaps you just have to love these men's adventure and exploitation books with a love that burns away a certain amount of sense. I enjoy them like one of those mini-blocks of cheese you get at Christmas time from Swiss Colony or Hickory Farms. You love to eat them in one or two sittings, but they don't stay with you for very long.

Anyway, our hero, Evan Tanner, does not sleep thanks to a brain injury received in Korea. He has some type of relationship with an organization that embarrasses the CIA (don't they all?). Tanner has no superhuman abilities, but the extra time awake allows him to learn more languages, train harder, and think farther out than the average person.

Hard to write, but Lawrence Block uses the 'ability' to good effect.

I won't spoil the ending, but it will bring a smile to your face.

Find it! Read it!
Profile Image for Hoenese Ruebesch.
87 reviews
April 19, 2020
A spy who couldn't sleep (Yes. It is possible according to the author) having quite an adventure from Bangkok to Saigon through the dense jungle of Indochina with a bit of help from a certain Thai lad who is desperate to get...laid.
Profile Image for Avri.
164 reviews1 follower
August 14, 2024
I enjoy the Tanner books - Block's prose is always lively and fun - but they strike me as tonally difficult. For throwaway adventure romps they get awfully dark and grim, making the OTT silliness and humor of the narration mildly uncomfortable.
755 reviews21 followers
September 13, 2020
Lawrence Block's Evan Tanner series is light hearted good fun which I use as a palate cleaner between ventures into the more serious stuff. Block's a hell of a writer so I'm not ashamed.
Profile Image for Viva.
1,358 reviews4 followers
February 1, 2021
This is the 4th Evan Tanner book I've read in order and by now I've got the measure of the series. Tanner is an involuntary sometime/part-time agent of an unnamed US secret agency. In his normal life, he writes term papers and thesis for cheating college students. He also belongs to every revolutionary, independence, army-in-exile group known to mankind (therefore he has friends in every country he can count on).

Spoilers from here on: In this book, he goes to Thailand because his friend (a Kenyan-American) dancer has been kidnapped by rural bandits and also because she has been accused of stealing the Thai Crown Jewels. There is a madcap adventure where he meets unlikely people along the way and hilarity ensues. In this book, he meets Dhang, a communist virgin bandit whose greatest and only wish is to devirginize himself and a Laotian septuagenarian, whose greatest wish is to return France to its former glory by recolonizing French colonies all around the world.

And as usual, there is a serious monologue in the middle by one of the characters where the author basically discourses some philosophical wisdom through the character. This part is usually worth reading.

Overall I gave this book high marks because I enjoyed reading about the Siamese highlands of which I know nothing about. I didn't give it 5 stars because some of the buildup was too long. This is a quick reading book. On the surface it's a comedic mass market pulp fiction but the subtle philosophy makes it a bit more than that.
Profile Image for Deirdre.
296 reviews8 followers
August 15, 2024
This isn't the first Lawrence Block novel I've read. I think it's perhaps the tenth; a mere sampling from the library of such a prolific writer. But it won't be the last. Oh no.

Interesting concept, writing about a man, Evan Tanner, who hasn't slept in 17 years. A man who travels widely and well. Travels that are not always pleasant, like traversing Thai jungles, that to Mr. Block are not at all pleasant. But he has to get to Laos to save a lady, a jazz quartet, retrieve stolen jewels, and see to it that his new Siamese friend gets laid. And, in the midst of all that, laugh out loud, because Mr. Block can be downright funny. Yes, I recommend reading this book, especially if you are looking forward to having some fun.
Profile Image for Brian.
287 reviews7 followers
January 13, 2022
Block has always been one of my favorite authors, especially his Matthew Scudder books, but I had never read any of the Evan Tanner series, of which The Scoreless Thai is #4. It was a quick, fun read and I'll likely read some of the others eventually.

In this one, Tanner goes to Thailand, Laos and both Vietnams to rescue his girlfriend and adventures ensue.
Profile Image for Linus.
34 reviews1 follower
November 20, 2024
A journey through the jungle, crossing various Asian countries in yellowface
Profile Image for David Highton.
3,742 reviews32 followers
October 10, 2016
good fun as usual but slightly depressing about US involvement in South Asia in the 60s
5,305 reviews62 followers
January 31, 2013
#4 in the Evan Tanner series. Two For Tanner (1967) was re-titled with the author's original title as The Scoreless Thai (2000), when it was reisued in hardcover. The revised title gives the reader more of the flavor of Tanner - a wise-cracking, international tilter at windmills, and unintentional secret agent. As the book is read, keep in mind that it was originally published during the Viet Nam War - although that fact will be much in evidence in the second half of the book.

Spy Evan Tanner series - Tanner's in Thailand with a partially baked plan and a butterfly net, hoping to snare a beautiful missing chanteuse who's metamorphosed into an international jewel thief. Tanner hopes everyone will buy his disguise as a rare butterfly researcher. And everyone does, except the guerilla band holding him captive. They intend to remove his head when the sun rises, so Tanner must put his fate in the hands of a randy Thai youth who will do anything for a woman, even set a suspected spy free. Soon they're running through the jungle together, chased by bandits, soldiers, and yellow fever, and racing headlong into the heart of darkness—and into the flames of war.
Profile Image for Glenn Younger.
Author 4 books5 followers
January 26, 2014
Still set in the sixties, this time Evan Tanner is in Thailand as well as other parts of the East. He's without his usual network of contacts, but that doesn't stop him from another haphazard journey that's filled with outrageous synchronicity born out of little pre-planning and lots of improvising in the moment all the way to another satisfying ending.

When compared to the first three books of the Evan Tanner series, the secondary characters weren't quite as well developed so a lot of the witty dialogue that marked the series was missing. Still, Tanner's observations and the curiosity of the location itself made up for any shortcomings that missing dialogue might have created. In fact, I'd almost forgotten the time frame of the story until they landed in Vietnam, right in the middle of the Vietnam war.
Profile Image for Karla Huebner.
Author 7 books94 followers
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September 25, 2013
I can't remember whether I read this years ago when I read many books by Lawrence Block, although I do remember reading some of the Evan Tanner series and it's probable that this was one. This one dates from 1968, and that shows both intentionally (the Vietnam war is on) and perhaps unintentionally (the sexual revolution is on, second-wave feminism not quite). But while one could complain about the book's sexual politics, it continues to be good escapist fiction. It's improbable, but that's a given (Evan Tanner is medically unable to sleep, so he learns exotic languages, writes other people's dissertations, and has wild adventures around the globe). Despite various deaths and explosions, the book is fun.
279 reviews
October 7, 2012
This is a book by one of America's most prolific writers, Lawrence Block. He's written more books than meet the eye since he's used more than one nom de plume.

Two for Tanner was the name for this book chosen by Block's publisher. He had submitted the book with the title Scoreless Thai. It's one oof the series featuring Tanner, who suffered a head wound during the Korean War and is OK, except that he can't sleep.

The action takes place in Thailand and Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Tanner snoops around Cambodia and gets caught by some irregular soldiers, and of course, escapes.

It's a fun read; I like the Tanner character quie a bit.
Profile Image for Karl.
3,258 reviews372 followers
September 28, 2014
A classic tale of espionage and suspense, originally published over 40 years ago, and out of print for years.

Evan Tanner, the spy who never sleeps, returns in a timeless adventure appearing in hardcover for the first time, and with its original title restored.

Originally published as a paperback original more than fourty years ago, Two for Tanner (as the publisher mistitled it) concerns one amorous yet unsuccessful native, an ebony-skinned singer and jewel thief, numerous lost causes (some of them eventually found), a prepubescent princess in exile, and Evan Tanner, who must find his way from a single cell bamboo prison to their salvation ... or die trying.
Profile Image for Nathan.
595 reviews12 followers
December 4, 2015
Freelance secret agent has to go to Indochina during the Vietnam War to find what happened to his jazz singer girlfriend. Gets caught up with Communist guerrillas and finds himself on a boat of dreams.

Somewhat odd little book, this. Sort of an anti-Bond (as the lead says himself a few times).

I think Tanner would make a good friend for Repairman Jack. They have the same sort of way of looking at the world and their place in it.

Rated M for violence and sexual themes. 3/5
Profile Image for Tommy Verhaegen.
2,979 reviews5 followers
August 3, 2016
Een jungle-avontuur dit keer, een compleet andere reis dan de oostblok reizen in de andere boeken. Spannend, met humor, in een vijandige omgeving. Evan's merkwaaridige lidmaatschappen en contacten worden wel vermeld maar komen hem hier slechts zijdelings van pas. Wel erg ongeloofwaardig: zijn vriendin wordt meermaals verkaracht, maar wanneer hi haar bevrijdt heeft is bijna het eerste waar ze aan denken: seks hebben. Maar als fictie past het perfect in deze prachtige verhalenreeks.
922 reviews2 followers
April 24, 2022
This is one of the Evan Tanner series, a man who is unable to sleep. It was written in 1968 and is a little bit dated but not too badly. At 160 pages it reads more like a novella in this era of 800 page tomes. Kind of a pleasant change. As for the story itself, it was amusing if pretty unlikely. I enjoy Blocks slightly sarcastic humor and his version from over 50 years ago of what the future would look like.
Profile Image for Elizabeth (Alaska).
1,570 reviews553 followers
May 17, 2010
I wouldn't normally give anything in this genre 4 stars, but Larry Block writes such fun books that it's hard to deprive him. This is one of his earliest works with Evan Tanner the leading man.
Profile Image for Patty.
30 reviews
March 15, 2012
An early L. Block novel that is wonderfully written. It has some of his best ironic humor I have read and is a snapshot back to the late 1960's. Not all humorous though. A good read.
Profile Image for Joyce.
1,665 reviews9 followers
August 15, 2013
Tanner was involved with a woman from Nirobi who went to Thailand with a group of singers and was kidnapped. With the aid of a Thai rebel, he went off to her rescue.
Profile Image for Eliana.
453 reviews4 followers
Read
April 7, 2014
A hit man who has a therapits and who ends up as hero/protagonist? You got it!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews

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