Sun 3 Apr 2022
A GOLD MEDAL Mystery Review: LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Canceled Czech.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
LAWRENCE BLOCK – The Canceled Czech. Evan Tanner #2. Gold Medal d1747, paperback original; 1st printing, 1966. Reprint editions include: Jove, paperback, 1984; Otto Penzler Books, hardcover, 1994; Berkley, paperback, 1999; Harper, paperback, 2007.
The underlying gimmick in Lawrence Block’s “Evan Tanner†books is that he is also known as The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep, or the title of the first book in the series. I have misplaced my notes as to how he got the injury to his head that caused the problem, but the fact is that he cannot fall asleep. I don’t know if it’s possible in the real worlds, but he is up and awake 24 hours a day.
Which as gimmicks go, it’s quite a good one, or it would be if it ever came into play as this particular book goes on, but it doesn’t. For reasons that were probably gone into a lot more thoroughly in the first book, the head of some very hush-hush organization thinks Tanner works for him. His assignment: help the last of the high echelon non-German Nazis escape from his prison in Czechoslovakia where he’s about to go on trial and be executed.
Tanner wonders why. It seems that the US has been secretly monitoring all of Janos Kotacek’s communications with the outside world from his lair in Portugal, and they have decided it would be more useful to keep him alive than to have him dead. The job won’t be easy, but Tanner agrees to give it a try.
When he gets to Czechoslovakia, however, he has no plan. He’s the kind of fellow who takes his opportunities wherever he can get them. And thus enter Greta, the daughter of the man, a devout follower of the imprisoned man, who agrees to help Tanner get Kotacek free. To that end, Greta, who is not as political as her father, is sent along with Tanner to aid and assist him as best she can.
And what she really does best she does in bed. Both buxom and blonde, she is everything men in the 1960s dreamed of in a woman – a nymphomaniac. Sometimes, Tanner realizes, it is better not to have a plan. Greta’s proclivities in this regard, as it so happens, is exactly what he needs to pull off the most wild and woolly escape possible.
The story is basically serious, but Block tells with such a light touch that the pages fly by. Once the escape has taken place, though, and Greta is no longer needed, she disappears from the story completely, never to return, and it’s quite a slog to get Kotacek back to his home is Lisbon. I’m deliberately leaving out all of the details of both the first and second halves of the story, but I would like to say the first half is by far the better one.
April 3rd, 2022 at 8:16 pm
These were Block at his lightest, almost throwbacks to some of the material he wrote for the soft core lines under various pen names and a few of his racier mystery outings.
To some extent Tanner was the Shell Scott of the secret agents in his own slightly off kilter reality. He was far above all the Man from O.R.G.Y. and Coxeman style books, but not really in competition with Matt Helm, Joe Gall, or Sam Durrell in terms of style.
He existed in his own little niche between the serious Bondian adventures and the soft core satire of the others, not quite one or the other, the plot leaning one way, but the writing toward the more serious side.
They were great fun mostly, sometimes veering between soft core and slapstick with a little violence and intrigue thrown in, but I pretty much knew what I was getting into with them and enjoyed them for what they were.
ME TANNER, YOU JANE is probably the most politically incorrect of the lot and one of the best though I liked CANCELED CZECH despite the bi polar structure.
Tanner’s condition is real and serious, usually resulting from serious head trauma though I’m sure it is much more difficult and life threatening than portrayed in these books (Tanner does usually mention his life span is likely shorter because of it). Like Daredevil being blind in the comics we aren’t supposed to invest that much into it, and probably no one did then. Today it would have to be taken much more seriously than this.
Though there had been some promising books by this time I’m not sure any of us realized or recognized what Block was going to mean to the genre when these were coming out, though most of us recognized a gifted and playful writer to keep an eye on.
I don’t know how hard these are to find in the wild, but they are available in ebook form easily.
April 4th, 2022 at 10:29 am
If filmed exactly as written, CZECH might be too strong to fit the PG-13 category, but neither would I rate it a full-fledged R. It’s closer that, though, than the lower rating.
In spite of its punningly funny title, which has always intrigued me, I’ve never read this one until now. In spite of some misgivings, as stated in the review, I’m glad I did. Also note that the cover blurb reads: “Her name was Greta. She was the sort of Czech that every crook in Europe would like to bounce.”
April 4th, 2022 at 4:12 am
“Tanner’s condition is real and serious…”
The British writer Michael Gilbert introduced Henry Bohun, a character with the same condition, in the 1950s. He mentions in passing that sufferers are liable to die at any moment. I’d always thought of it as just a useful illness to give a character to explain their hyperactivity.
April 4th, 2022 at 8:59 am
I read the Tanner series back in the Sixties. Lawrence Block became one of my favorite writers. As David points out, most of Lawrence Block’s work is available on https://lawrenceblock.com
April 4th, 2022 at 10:29 am
Off the top of my head, my recollection is that he was wounded in the Korean war; a piece of shrapnel destroyed the part of his brain that controls sleep. We now know that the brain needs sleep and that people who go long periods without sleep have their mental processes seriously disrupted. He would not be functional in that condition.