THE SEARCH FOR BRUNO HEIDLER

This international thriller is an enormous improvement over Marlowe's last novel, an historical about Greece in the time of Euripides called The Shining. The le CarrÉ-styled ""hero"" here is intensely well-motivated. Ex-officer Ted Dunbar has been working for eight years in France as a civilian corpse-locator for the U. S. Army's Graves Registration section. His wife, au ex-journalist and now a mystery novelist, has abruptly begun divorce proceedings and disappeared into Paris. When Ted's section chief is murdered, the CIA drafts Ted into helping them locate Bruno Heidler, a notorious war criminal who was a friend of Ted's wife. Ted's wife, he discovers, has been cuckolding him in order to gain inspiration for her mystery novels; one lover per book. She's working on her fourth book, and the CIA is convinced that Bruno Heidler is both lover and subject material. Much of the action takes place on the Left Bank, in and about Les Deux Magots, and in a little village in the Alps. The action is absorbing and the author has tremendous fun parodying CIA agents. Superior.