VINTAGE~Any Number Can Play~Dennis Bloodworth~233 pages~1973 1st American Edition~Ex-Library~Hardcover~Dust Jacket~Condition is Acceptable~Ships with USPS Media Mail in the Continental USA

FROM THE FRONT AND BACK FLAPS

The British have long had a superior way with suspense novels, mysteries, and pure farce, and reading Dennis Bloodworth's new novel (he is a crack newspaperman for the London Observer who wrote those eminently readable BOMC selections, The Chinese Looking Glass and An Eye for the Dragon) proves once again that the small island that produced Evelyn Waugh, Eric Ambler, Norman Douglas, and Graham Greene is still capable of supplying highly literate first-rate entertainment.

The chief characters are: LARRY IVANSONG and his Chinese wife THINKING LOTUS. Larry is an English reporter and an expert on Southeast Asian affairs whose present base is in a country called Mekong. Because of his Chinese wife, Larry has become the unwilling accomplice of the saturnine British Intelligence agent named GREEN (sic) whose compassion quotient is approximately equal to that of a piranha fish.

Nor are the United States and the C.I.A. spared: INQVIST and STRAWBURY and assorted military advisors are all too recognizably Johnson-Nixonian meddlers. There are other exotic types: agents, double-agents, and  simple predators looking for the main chance; JACQUELINE CANNABIÈRE, a tart out of Marseilles with agile, adept toes; MAX ALIAS, a métisse with a love for gibbons; FELICITY CLIPSTREAM, who surprisingly transfers Max's affections from simians to herself; and SUZY FLOWERCLASS, a delightfully lubricious imposter whose hair is sometimes silver,  sometimes red bronze, but basically black. There is also a clutch of double-crossing native princes who puzzle the innocents from the Western world and even, occasionally, themselves.

But the star character is the seer and guru known as the PARAMAHAMSA BONZE, complete with Buddha ears, who through his gnomic utterances rules the political destiny of Southeast Asia. In him Bloodworth has created a character worthy to rank with the great charlatans and rogues of all time.

ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY is compounded of surprise, expectancy, imposture, and laughter. It is perhaps wryly unfortunate that a great deal of it is all too true.

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BOOK IS: 

ACCEPTABLE: Worn book that has complete text pages (including those with maps or plates) but may lack endpapers, half-title, etc. Binding, jacket (if any), etc., may also be worn.