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TANNER'S TIGER
by Lawrence Block
Harper, August 2007
256 pages
$7.99
ISBN: 0061262366


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Although Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder books are among my favorites, plus I have read most of the Burglar books, I'd never read a Tanner novel before. The idea of a Korean war veteran whose sleep center was destroyed by an enemy shell and who became a secret agent for an unknown and unnamed agency when he returned to the US, just didn't interest me.

However, TANNER'S TIGER, the fifth in the series, was written in 1968 and is set at Expo '67, a place I spent some time at during the Montreal Film Festival, which was located that year at the giant World's Fair positioned on two islands in the St Lawrence River

Tanner lives in New York. He has a ward, Minna, who he rescued from the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. She is the sole surviving relative of the King of Lithuania and an extremely bright young girl who can twist adults around all her fingers and toes.

'The Chief', Tanner's mysterious boss, wants Tanner to go to Montreal to investigate strange goings-on at the Cuban pavilion. Minna and Tanner get on a plane at Kennedy airport, but are turned back at Dorval (not Duval) by Canadian immigration officials who object to Tanner's membership of Quebec separatist organizations. The fact that Tanner is a member of every fringe group that ever existed, just because he needs something to keep him occupied during the extra hours he has gained by not sleeping, never enters the equation.

They are put on the next plane back to New York, but Tanner finds a way to get across the border and return to Montreal and the fairgrounds. On a visit to the Cuban pavilion, Minna disappears. Tanner goes to the flat of a member of one of the separatist groups. She is a beautiful woman with a tiger skin bedspread (hence the title of the book). The Queen is going to visit the Fair and her group wants to blow up the barge on which she will arrive. Tanner must thwart this group while finding Minna and discovering what is going on in the Cuban pavilion.

This book brought back some fond memories of the days spent in Montreal during the summer of 1967, perhaps not with the Queen but with some of the invited guests of the Montreal film festival. It's a very irreverent book, depicting those Tanner meets in an offhand manner. If this book is typical of the series, then he is sending up James Bond et al.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, August 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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