REVIEWED BY BOB ADEY:

   

MORIS FARHI – The Pleasure of Your Death. Omar James Baxter #1. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1972. No US edition.

   Meet Omar James Baxter, Turkish-Scottish-American stunt man and private detective. His client, Van Loon, received a threatening crossword (yes, that’s right), but is shot down despite Baxter’s presence.

   More killings follow, connected with a wartime resistance group, “The Crossword Veterans,” and somewhere there’s something for everyone (the ex-resistance, the ex-Nazis, British Intelligence, Baxter’s sexy girl friend Charity) is trying to find.

   The action is fast and furious, the sex scenes strangely impressive (maybe it’s me), and the twists in the plot sufficient to retain your interest. Distinctly offbeat, it fails by a short head to be really top class.

– Reprinted from The Poison Pen, Volume 4, Number 5/6 (December, 1981). Permission granted by publisher/editor Jeff Meyerson.

   

Bio-Bibliographic Update: An online seller of this books says: “Farhi is a Turkish-born author who has been vice president of International PEN and has campaigned for writers persecuted or imprisoned by repressive regimes throughout the world.”

   Farhi has one other book in Hubin, that being The Last of Days (Bodley Head, UK, hardcover, 1983). It does not appear to be a second adventure of Omar Baxter. There are less than a dozen copies of this book offered for sale on line, almost all of them with asking prices of $50 and up.