THE WARLOCK

A suspense novel with supernatural overtones, this starts out quite intriguingly as hero Anson Bolda is returned ""to the land of the living"" West from a Russian prison. It seems that as a boy Anson was the son of a reputed witch, a Polish peasant woman. Separated during the war, Anson, who was bilingual, was enlisted by the American Forces and taken to the U.S. to be trained as an agent specializing in radio engineering. Later he is sent (primarily because of his ""Warlock"" background which presumably indicates an increased survival factor...warlocks are supposedly very hard to kill...) back to Poland to plant radios. The U.S. is engaged in an ultra-secret NARK satellite program which might ultimately eavesdrop on the Kremlin. But Anson is doublecrossed and he wants to find out why. And who arranged for his prisoner exchange? No one seems to know and the latter half of the novel is a highly complex, confusing affair which dissipates in the last scene. Is the reader to believe that Anson, who has shown no unusual talents beyond that of survival, is a warlock and can therefore be handed the biggest job in the world...control of international security? Leaping Lucifer!