A Body Without a Soul

Fortunately, the Americans don’t go in much for torture, at least not when there’s a public light on things.

I think I’m almost done with the Donald E. Westlake in-memoriam readathon; I think there’s just one more book published under his name that’s in print or recently has been (although I read most of the Dortmunder books prior to starting these writeups).

This is another humorous-ish thriller, but with more real violence than the Dortmunders.  What happens if a man is recruited as a Soviet sleeper agent and isn’t told?  Well, he gets paid $1000 a month for nothing, and all is well — until he’s activated.  Then he has to try to figure out how to get through the ordeal, preferably keeping himself, his family, a foreign head of state and various random bystanders all alive.

This is copyrighted 2003, but I’m hoping it was written at least a few years earlier.  If not, the prospect of terrorism in New York City seems both in poor taste and oddly discordant; the Oklahoma City bombing (14 years ago today) is mentioned, but September 11th isn’t.

The retroactive poor taste gets worse when it comes to torture; here the bad guys are willing to use it, but feel safe in the knowledge that Americans won’t use it against them.  It was published while Americans were torturing, and I’m reading it in the days following the release of memos authorizing it, in detail.