Review by peacehammer (2004-09-12)
This is one of my favorite popular novels. I'd never heard of Trevanian until this book. I picked it up at a bookstore, read the first page and didn't stop until I was finished. Trevanian (aka Rodney Whitaker)strings words together in a way that compells you to keep reading. The tone is dark and the "hero" has a way of seeing the world (especially Americans) in a rather negative fashion. You won't forget this work. You will also learn a lot about post-war Japan, the game of Go, the Basque culture, and, of course, how to kill people with a rolled up magazine. For espionage fans this should be standard reading.

Review by kirwar4face (2004-05-21)
I haven't read a lot of espionage thrillers; maybe a dozen, all pretty good ones. I'm not sorry I read this one. It's rich with humor and philosophy as well as existential shock. But I still lie awake at night sometimes, years after the first reading (a masochist, I've read it twice) haunted by incidents from the novel, shivering at the random disregard for human life inherent in Trevanian's world of international power playing, epitomized by such an incident as...but you read it...then you can lie awake and shiver, too.

Note: the book's rabid, gratuitous Arab-bashing *, concentrated mostly in the opening pages, is terribly funny, but if sincere on the part of the author seems unfortunate in a book whose general effect is to discourage irrational dislike of other humans based on racial or national characteristics. (Rational dislike is, of course, never out of the question.) *Not to be confused with Volvo-bashing.