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Evan Tanner #3
Tanner's Twelve Swingers
Spy Evan Tanner is in over his head when he agrees to help a lovesick friend find a lost love and encounters a motley crew of disaffected Eastern Europeans who dream about emigrating, and see Tanner as their ticket out. Reprint. BAKER & TAYLOR Bks
272 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
53 people are currently reading
235 people want to read
About the author
Lawrence Block
768 books2,995 followersLawrence 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.
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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
March 9, 2017
This is the only truly excellent follow-up in the series beginning with the (mis-titled) "The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep". These are comic espionage novels, with similar mocking anti-Cold War elements Terry Southern was said to have added to the "Dr Strangelove" script. Here, like the first Tanner book, a series of wildly improbable events, and bad luck turned good, allow Tanner to visit Macedonia, walk all the way to Estonia, and return via Alaska gathering (along the way) his version of the Dirty Dozen.
Don't ask; quit wrinkling your nose--read and enjoy.
Don't ask; quit wrinkling your nose--read and enjoy.
August 19, 2020
I thought the first two Evan Tanner stories were pretty ordinary...yeah, Tanner can't sleep and he's a polyglot but so what? This third instalment is much better - you can see Block's obvious writing talent come through and you're treated to a fun ride.
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May 20, 2024Tanner’s Twelve Swingers (Evan Tanner # 3) (1967) (Gold Medal # d1869) continues the tongue-in-cheek adventures of sort-of-espionage-agent Evan Tanner who sort-of works for a clandestine agency but is not actually on their payroll. Here, he turns down a job stomping out a South American revolution in order to do a favor for a friend (Karlis) who escaped the Iron Curtain only to leave his everlasting love, a Latvian gymnast, Sofija, behind.
Enter Evan Tanner who thinks he can sneak behind the iron curtain and rescue her and bring her out across the Gulf of Finland with the entire Soviet Baltic fleet looking on. On the way to Latvia, though, Tanner stops in Macedonia (in former Yugoslavia to meet his son) and possibly make more children with Annalya and then proceeds to somehow cross over impenetrable borders with an aging man Milan Butec who wants to escape Yugoslavia with his book, and Minna, the direct descendant of the last king of Lithuania, who will be come the undisputed Queen if Lithuania ever shook off Soviet domination, a veritable odd trio of international intrigue. Minna though is a young six-year-old child who has never left her room before because her guardians deemed it not safe.
In Riga, the capital of Latvia, Tanner continues to find that his accomplices in the mission of escape from Soviet rule are more numerous than he ever could have complicated and that he eventually needs an entire bus to whisk his friends out of Latvia.
Tanner’s Twelve Swingers (a title that you will find has little to do with nightlife) is a great tongue-in-cheek look at espionage during the Cold War and how one determined sort-of-agent can cause so many international incidents and remain unscathed.
Enter Evan Tanner who thinks he can sneak behind the iron curtain and rescue her and bring her out across the Gulf of Finland with the entire Soviet Baltic fleet looking on. On the way to Latvia, though, Tanner stops in Macedonia (in former Yugoslavia to meet his son) and possibly make more children with Annalya and then proceeds to somehow cross over impenetrable borders with an aging man Milan Butec who wants to escape Yugoslavia with his book, and Minna, the direct descendant of the last king of Lithuania, who will be come the undisputed Queen if Lithuania ever shook off Soviet domination, a veritable odd trio of international intrigue. Minna though is a young six-year-old child who has never left her room before because her guardians deemed it not safe.
In Riga, the capital of Latvia, Tanner continues to find that his accomplices in the mission of escape from Soviet rule are more numerous than he ever could have complicated and that he eventually needs an entire bus to whisk his friends out of Latvia.
Tanner’s Twelve Swingers (a title that you will find has little to do with nightlife) is a great tongue-in-cheek look at espionage during the Cold War and how one determined sort-of-agent can cause so many international incidents and remain unscathed.
November 29, 2016
I generally enjoy the work of Lawrence Block, as he's a terrifically talented writer. This was my first foray into the Evan Tanner series (I've wholeheartedly enjoyed several of his other series), and was just a bit disappointed. The story was farfetched and grew more so with each chapter. However, due to his talent, the author salvaged (for me, at least) the book with some laugh out loud scenes, making fun as it were, of the ludicrous situations he'd created for his rather over the top protagonist, Evan Tanner. The bungling of the English language by a Russian pilot who, of course, willingly defects and helps extricate Tanner and his collection of political misfits escape what is clearly a "no-win" situation was just about the funniest part of the book, and I couldn't help but find myself enjoying this lighthearted read. Nevertheless, in a larger context, I'd place this character / series further down on my Block books "to-read" list than others. Good, but not great.
June 6, 2018
I really enjoyed this book. The situations that kept falling into his lap, the comedic moments. I liked all the characters.
The ending made me laugh out loud.
The ending made me laugh out loud.
February 10, 2024
Set mostly in eastern Europe in the mid 1960's
October 31, 2025
Continuing my revisit of Lawrence Block’s Evan Tanner series, this is the third instalment, in which Tanner – lover and joiner of lost cause groups who also does jobs for a super-secret agency that mistakenly thinks he’s one of their agents – chooses his own mission just to get out of doing another mission. The Chief wants Tanner to stop the Colombian Agrarian Revolutionary Movement from overthrowing the current regime. Tanner – who happens to be a member of the Colombian Agrarian Revolutionary Movement – says he’s not available because he has a mission already lined up in Latvia (which at the time, you may remember from history class, was part of the USSR).
Tanner is not exactly lying – the truth is that he had drunkenly promised a lovelorn friend in the Latvian Army-In-Exile (of which Tanner is also a member) that he would go to Latvia to bring his gymnast girlfriend Sofija to America – which is impossible, but it gives him an excuse to not go to Colombia. Naturally, things get complicated as he makes his way to Latvia via various Eastern European contacts, all of whom have their own favours to ask. Before long, Tanner has to not only smuggle Sofija out of Latvia, but also her sister, her entire gymnast team, a subversive Yugoslavian author (and his manifesto), two rolls of microfilm, some documents written in Chinese, and a six-year-old girl named Minna who happens to be the heir to the Lithuanian throne (once the monarchy is restored, which is another cause Tanner supports).
This one takes a little while to get going, as Tanner spends the first few chapters establishing how he ended up on this mission in the first place, while also taking time to visit his infant son in Macedonia (see The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep for details). But the fun builds up as he finds himself saddled with one task after another. It’s also considerably lighter in tone than the previous book The Canceled Czech (well, I mean, come on, Nazis) and displays a lot of the humour I remember enjoying about this series. And while Minna now comes across to me as a little too mature for a six-year-old, she’s also rather likeable, and anyway, who reads these things for gritty realism?
Tanner is not exactly lying – the truth is that he had drunkenly promised a lovelorn friend in the Latvian Army-In-Exile (of which Tanner is also a member) that he would go to Latvia to bring his gymnast girlfriend Sofija to America – which is impossible, but it gives him an excuse to not go to Colombia. Naturally, things get complicated as he makes his way to Latvia via various Eastern European contacts, all of whom have their own favours to ask. Before long, Tanner has to not only smuggle Sofija out of Latvia, but also her sister, her entire gymnast team, a subversive Yugoslavian author (and his manifesto), two rolls of microfilm, some documents written in Chinese, and a six-year-old girl named Minna who happens to be the heir to the Lithuanian throne (once the monarchy is restored, which is another cause Tanner supports).
This one takes a little while to get going, as Tanner spends the first few chapters establishing how he ended up on this mission in the first place, while also taking time to visit his infant son in Macedonia (see The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep for details). But the fun builds up as he finds himself saddled with one task after another. It’s also considerably lighter in tone than the previous book The Canceled Czech (well, I mean, come on, Nazis) and displays a lot of the humour I remember enjoying about this series. And while Minna now comes across to me as a little too mature for a six-year-old, she’s also rather likeable, and anyway, who reads these things for gritty realism?
December 1, 2007
Definitely as readable as the other Block books I've read, "Tanner's Twelve Swingers" wasn't quite as focused. I enjoyed reading about Tanner's romp across Eastern Europe. Evan Tanner makes it with women in every country he enters, finds immediate, random solutions to all obstacles in his way, and in such a short book, none of it gets old. I don't know if I'll be reading another Tanner book for awhile - I think there are many - but its good to know there's a capering, sleepless spy out there to return to in the future.
A much younger Block than the one who writes in such deadpan terms of Keller the hit man, I find much of the political banter between the characters rather thin and unbelievable. Block's left leanings make some of the causes that Tanner gets behind - or gets thrust behind - rather sympathetic, but I found the oh so brief discussions of Easter European, Soviet Bloc and South American politics to get annoying toward the end. Okay, so Tanner is helping out all these revolutionaries - in the end, who cares? Block never gives his readers a reason to get behind any of the causes the way that Tanner gets behind them.
I enjoyed the dialog between Tanner and Milan Butec - a Yugoslav intellectual that Tanner is smuggling back to America, along with his 500 page manuscript wrapped in oil skin and taped to his body.
Tanner meets Butec and a motley crew of other characters on his way to Latvia, or the LSSR, to pick up and smuggle a gymnast back to the States for his Latvian revolutionary friend who's camped in Providence, RI with an exiled Latvian revolutionary army.
It sounds sexier than it is, but makes for a clean, entertaining read.
Tanner's relationship with Minna - the six year old lost Queen of Lithuania - is cheap, in my opinion, a last ditch effort at making his exploits less creepy.
A much younger Block than the one who writes in such deadpan terms of Keller the hit man, I find much of the political banter between the characters rather thin and unbelievable. Block's left leanings make some of the causes that Tanner gets behind - or gets thrust behind - rather sympathetic, but I found the oh so brief discussions of Easter European, Soviet Bloc and South American politics to get annoying toward the end. Okay, so Tanner is helping out all these revolutionaries - in the end, who cares? Block never gives his readers a reason to get behind any of the causes the way that Tanner gets behind them.
I enjoyed the dialog between Tanner and Milan Butec - a Yugoslav intellectual that Tanner is smuggling back to America, along with his 500 page manuscript wrapped in oil skin and taped to his body.
Tanner meets Butec and a motley crew of other characters on his way to Latvia, or the LSSR, to pick up and smuggle a gymnast back to the States for his Latvian revolutionary friend who's camped in Providence, RI with an exiled Latvian revolutionary army.
It sounds sexier than it is, but makes for a clean, entertaining read.
Tanner's relationship with Minna - the six year old lost Queen of Lithuania - is cheap, in my opinion, a last ditch effort at making his exploits less creepy.
January 7, 2016
One of the funniest of the series... that scene at Riga is pure bedlam
January 31, 2021
I'm a big fan of this series but the hilarity of this one seems a bit forced. It's hard to pigeon-hole this series. Tanner does involuntary part-time work for an unnamed US secret agency that is not the CIA or FBI (I guess they didn't have NSA then in the 60's when the book was written). Instead he writes papers and thesis for cheating students for a living. He is also a member of every revolutionary group or group-in-exile known to mankind and supports their causes (so pretty much he has friends in every country on earth who is willing to help him out).
Spoilers beyond here: In this book he declines a job for the agency to destroy or destabilize a Colombian revolutionary group (that he's actually a member of) and instead travels to Latvia (a SSR of the USSR at this time) to bring out a girlfriend for his lovelorn Latvian Army in Exile buddy who lives in NY. What's next is an trip behind the Iron Curtain where he accumulates travel companions.
First he visits Macedonia where he had fomented a revolution and a revolutionary maiden to begat a son in a previous book. He picks up a Yugoslavian minister who is also a dissident, he then picks up dissent Polish microfilm, unknown Chinese blueprints, a child who is last and only heir to the Lithuanian throne, his Latvian buddy's girlfriend, her sister and finally the entire Latvian gymnastic team (seems like a 70's Lampoon Vacation movie by now). Finally he manages to convince a Soviet pilot to steal a bomber and fly everyone to Alaska. Yes, in the 60's in this book, the Soviets didn't fly squadrons of fighters or send missiles to down the plane and the US just allowed it to fly in and didn't think anything suspicious about it.
To sum up, this is one of those 90's adventure trip movies except it's a book. You really have to suspend belief. There's only one part where the characters have a serious dialog and that's where the Yugoslavian minister talks about smaller countries being better because they have smaller conflicts that don't involve the rest of the world.
To me, this book was a let down from the first 2. Not sure why since the plot and style of writing are fairly similar, maybe this one was just a little to forced. I still do enjoy both the light hearted writing and the serious messages hidden among the comedy.
Spoilers beyond here: In this book he declines a job for the agency to destroy or destabilize a Colombian revolutionary group (that he's actually a member of) and instead travels to Latvia (a SSR of the USSR at this time) to bring out a girlfriend for his lovelorn Latvian Army in Exile buddy who lives in NY. What's next is an trip behind the Iron Curtain where he accumulates travel companions.
First he visits Macedonia where he had fomented a revolution and a revolutionary maiden to begat a son in a previous book. He picks up a Yugoslavian minister who is also a dissident, he then picks up dissent Polish microfilm, unknown Chinese blueprints, a child who is last and only heir to the Lithuanian throne, his Latvian buddy's girlfriend, her sister and finally the entire Latvian gymnastic team (seems like a 70's Lampoon Vacation movie by now). Finally he manages to convince a Soviet pilot to steal a bomber and fly everyone to Alaska. Yes, in the 60's in this book, the Soviets didn't fly squadrons of fighters or send missiles to down the plane and the US just allowed it to fly in and didn't think anything suspicious about it.
To sum up, this is one of those 90's adventure trip movies except it's a book. You really have to suspend belief. There's only one part where the characters have a serious dialog and that's where the Yugoslavian minister talks about smaller countries being better because they have smaller conflicts that don't involve the rest of the world.
To me, this book was a let down from the first 2. Not sure why since the plot and style of writing are fairly similar, maybe this one was just a little to forced. I still do enjoy both the light hearted writing and the serious messages hidden among the comedy.
February 26, 2017
I have a soft spot for the Evan Tanner books. Partially because I unexpectedly find myself living in Eastern Europe for a few years, so I have had occasion to visit many of the same countries and cities where Tanner’s adventures occur. In fact, Evan visits my new hometown Krakow, Poland in this book.
The novels are also funny, culturally insightful, and entertaining in their right.
In his third novel, Tanner goes to Latvia to help a friend’s girlfriend defect to America. Along the way he collects of menagerie of discontented gymnasts, political dissidents, an heiress to a royal lineage out of power for a thousand years, stolen manuscripts, and a state-of-the-art Russian stealth bomber. Somehow, he also creates a coup in South America.
It is helpful to keep a 1960’s map handy, as the countries and borders have changed a lot in fifty years. In fact, much of my enjoyment of the series is seeing how many of Tanner’s hopeless causes have actually come true in history.
The novels are also funny, culturally insightful, and entertaining in their right.
In his third novel, Tanner goes to Latvia to help a friend’s girlfriend defect to America. Along the way he collects of menagerie of discontented gymnasts, political dissidents, an heiress to a royal lineage out of power for a thousand years, stolen manuscripts, and a state-of-the-art Russian stealth bomber. Somehow, he also creates a coup in South America.
It is helpful to keep a 1960’s map handy, as the countries and borders have changed a lot in fifty years. In fact, much of my enjoyment of the series is seeing how many of Tanner’s hopeless causes have actually come true in history.
January 29, 2023
Entirely frivolous bundle of spy fluff. Tanner makes no real sense at all as the multi-lingual insomniac with a penchant for revolution in the Baltics. This was astonishingly daft, but a bundle of fun. His mission makes no sense and the extra risks and burdens he picks up along the way make even less. I can even begin to understand why I found this so entertaining. It's very silly. I wonder where I might find the next in the series.
March 27, 2018
This was a fun, totally unrealistic book. Also a little dated. Interesting to hear about Yugoslavia which is no more. The main character is a James Bond type. I listened to it so it was a fun driving book - not too intense. I’d probably get another one in the series to listen to.
May 10, 2018
While I have read most of the books in the Bernie, Matt, and Keller series, I think this is the first Tanner book I've read. It is quite different in tone and style from the others. I like it, but won't rush to find other Tanner books.
March 6, 2020
RPL Audio
Sort of a spy/comedy book. Seems like Block was trying out a lighter version of what he had earlier written. I will look for others in the series, but he gives enough background that you don't have to have read the earlier ones.
Sort of a spy/comedy book. Seems like Block was trying out a lighter version of what he had earlier written. I will look for others in the series, but he gives enough background that you don't have to have read the earlier ones.
April 20, 2018
I keep trying to enjoy this series but I just can’t do it. Not my cup o tea I guess...
November 4, 2019
A pure delight !
November 13, 2022
Wonderful to discover a new-to-me pulp writer, just a fun ride through eastern european politics. Tanner fucks!! A delight.
February 17, 2023
Another author I have not read in years. Lawrence Block has created a witty and fun character in Evan Tamner. This was a fun and quirky read I quite enjoyed.
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June 11, 2023Got this at Second Story Book Annex, I think around the holidays.
March 14, 2024
This was a fun, quick read. It’s from 1968 so some of it is dated in a good way and some is just dated, but I’m prepared to work with that.
July 15, 2024
I love how things just somehow work out for Evan on his crazy adventures and the extra people he accumulates along the way.
January 16, 2025
This one is far-fetched but in a forgivable way.
A lot happens over a very short book but then finishes rather quickly with an improbable getaway-to-safety ending.
A lot happens over a very short book but then finishes rather quickly with an improbable getaway-to-safety ending.
May 14, 2025
3.5; insouciant anti-authoritarian frippery is the best sort of frippery.
July 25, 2025
lots of fun some might say 12 gymnasts dropping twelve feet onto the necks of russian soldiers is far fetched and lazy writing. Nope
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 1, 2008
You may remember Tanner from previous reviews: the spy who can’t sleep. This novel takes place earlier than the one I had read and Block provides a more detailed explanation of just how Tanner got himself into this position (The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep is the first in the series and, naturally, has the most detail). Besides the small pension he gets monthly from the government for the head injury that resulted in his inability to sleep, Tanner writes term papers for hire for those students either “a) too lazy, or b) too stupid, or c) both of the above,” to do their own work. He loves doing research anyway and never having to sleep means he has plenty of extra time on his hands (sounds wonderful). He needs the money to pay the memberships and magazine subscriptions for all the tiny little weird organizations he belongs to, such as the Columbian Agrarian Revolutionary Movement (CARM). It’s this latter association that sends him off to Latvia to rescue the beloved of a fellow member of the Latvian Army-in-Exile. It seems that the chief of the organization Tanner reputedly works for, or at least the organization he believes he works for -- it’s so secret that once when in trouble when Tanner claimed to be on assignment for a mysterious chief who worked for the government someone actually believed him, including the chief – and they want him to go to Columbia to suppress CARM’s incipient revolution, something Tanner is loath to do, so he persuades the chief he is already on assignment to Latvia. With everything so secret, who’s to know otherwise?
April 25, 2021
April 2021. I returned to this story 10 years later. FARFETHCED seems to bar the thematic word for this story. In the 1967 Afterward, the author indicated that that he hated the publisher's book title. He preferred "The Lettish Tomatoes". I appreciate the venues being being Europe with an emphasis on Latvia and Lithuania. Minna was was bright light in the story!!!!!
April 2011. One of Block's evan tanner books. I liked the story. I wasn't the author of most of this review: Sometime spy Evan Tanner has accepted impossible assignments for many reasons: money, thrills, to have something to occupy his waking hours (twenty-four of them every day, in fact, since battlefield shrapnel obliterated his brain's sleep center). But this might be the first time he's put his life on the line . . . for love.
Tanner's agreed to smuggle a sexy Latvian gymnast—the lost lady love of a heart-sick friend—out of Russia. With the Cold War at its chilliest and the Iron Curtain slammed shut, this will not be easy, especially since everybody in Eastern Europe, it seems, wants to tag along, including a subversive Slav author and the six-year-old heir to the nonexistent Lithuanian throne.
April 2011. One of Block's evan tanner books. I liked the story. I wasn't the author of most of this review: Sometime spy Evan Tanner has accepted impossible assignments for many reasons: money, thrills, to have something to occupy his waking hours (twenty-four of them every day, in fact, since battlefield shrapnel obliterated his brain's sleep center). But this might be the first time he's put his life on the line . . . for love.
Tanner's agreed to smuggle a sexy Latvian gymnast—the lost lady love of a heart-sick friend—out of Russia. With the Cold War at its chilliest and the Iron Curtain slammed shut, this will not be easy, especially since everybody in Eastern Europe, it seems, wants to tag along, including a subversive Slav author and the six-year-old heir to the nonexistent Lithuanian throne.
January 8, 2013
#3 in the Evan Tanner series. Evan Tanner is Lawrence Block's spy who doesn't sleep - ever since a head injury suffered during the Korean War. In this 1967 entry, his boss (of an unspecified Federal agency) wants him to head for Colombia to head off a popular revolution. Being in favor of the revolution, Tanner pleads an urgent need to go to Latvia - a friend has asked for Tanner's help in getting his girlfriend from behind the Iron Curtain. On the way to Latvia, he stops off in Macedonia to visit his love child (The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep (1966)) and then makes his unauthorized border hopping trip north, utilizing contacts made on his last adventure (The Canceled Czech (1966)).
The adventure is hilarious and the view of 45 year old, cold war era geo-politics is very interesting.
Spy Evan Tanner series - Evan Tanner goes behind the Iron Curtain to bring out one woman, but soon finds himself leading a much larger group.
The adventure is hilarious and the view of 45 year old, cold war era geo-politics is very interesting.
Spy Evan Tanner series - Evan Tanner goes behind the Iron Curtain to bring out one woman, but soon finds himself leading a much larger group.
October 2, 2007
Ok, I admit it--this was my first Tanner book, and I just loved the idea of a man who could speak so many languages. His misadventures are always great, since he tends to be fairly clueless and just bulls along. He starts this book out trying to get a friends girlfriend out from behind the Iron Curtain in order to avoid doing a job for the secret agency that THINKS he works for them. He winds up--rescuing the girl--plus 11 other gymnists from her troop, getting a disident out of Chekaslovakia, smuggling a subversive manuscript out, getting microfilms out, and, finally rescuing a little girl who is supposedly the "true" queen of one of the Baltic countries (the country in question hadn't had a kind since about 700 A.D. but what the hey, right?)
All in all, a good "lets see what happens if we just kind of blunder along" adventure/spy story
All in all, a good "lets see what happens if we just kind of blunder along" adventure/spy story
January 31, 2010
The spy who could not sleep is off on another venture to try to get a gymnast out of Latvia (this is before the breakup of the Soviet Union) for a Latvian/american who is in love with her. On the way he stops to see his son for the first time in Macedonia. As he makes his way north to Latvia he seems to accumulate baggage and people till in a comedy of errors he arrives at his last stop before the US with 15 people in tow. a quick, light read in the humorous mode.
ISBN - 1-58547-130-5, light suspense, Pages - 216, Print Size - L, Rating - 3
All books reviewed are from the library or purchased by the reviewer.
ISBN - 1-58547-130-5, light suspense, Pages - 216, Print Size - L, Rating - 3
All books reviewed are from the library or purchased by the reviewer.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews