BASE CASE

by Julian Rathbone ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 1981

Commissioner Jan Argand of Brabt (a fictional Holland/Belgium neighbor) is still suffering the after-effects of The Euro-killers (1980) here: his uncovering of multinational conspiracy got him institutionalized (paranoid schizophrenia!) for his own protection. So now he's recuperating with a safely far-away assignment: advising on security for a new, half-built US military base on the Virtue (read Canary) Islands. But even before Argand arrives, he's plagued by paranoiainducing weirdness: his attache case disappears, replaced by one full of heroin (the work of an Indian courier who soon turns up dead); a face from his past--a 1960s Marxist rebel-girl--turns up at an academic conference on the Islands. And demonstrations against the US base are heating up fast. It turns out, of course, that Argand isn't paranoid: a dirty conspiracy is indeed afoot. And though it's quite farfetched, readers who favor Rathbone's ironic, digressive style (much satire on the academic conference) will find this nicely slippery, highly political Euro-suspense.

Pub Date: May 11, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981

Categories: FICTION