DRAGON HARVEST

Predictable — with the big following the Lanny Budd saga has secured, for this again is dependable contemporary adventure, a thriller written against the headlines, with plausible (sometimes) footnotes to history in the contribution such a character as Lanny Budd might be making. Lanny, "scion of privilege" is still acting as P(residential) A(gent), still walking the tightrope of the appeaser, the friend of high-ranking Nasis, of British , of French collaborators — while beneath the patina of the art collector and dealer, who refuses to take sides, he is actually feeding important material to the White House, and helping the German Underground with funds, through Monck, now that Trudi is dead. Two new women enter his life, but he manages to avoid entangling alliances though Liebeth, another Irma in the making, angles for his favor; and Laurel Creston, writer, has to be smuggled out of Germany, via a trick in Lanny's repertoire of the occult, Hitler, Gearing, Hess — all play into Lanny's hands, but with the actual blitzkring under way, and Paris in German hands, Lanny is left pretty close to last act in his double reis...My humph on the enormous success of this series (this is, I think, the sixth) is that Sinclair tells a fast paced story which has a background of known facts and of backstairs gossip of the rich and famous.