I'm primarily a lurker on this list, but since I joined, I've
been finding all sorts of titles to add to my reading stacks.
A while back, I bid on and won a pair of Paul Kavanagh (aka
Lawrence Block?) books on eBay: _Such Men are Dangerous_ and
_The Triumph of Evil_. Yesterday, I actually found time to
read _Such Men..._ It was an interesting and unusual
book.
At the front of the book are two prefaces, designed to
suggest that the book is autobiographical and that the
editors just went ahead and printed the story the way they
received it, with a plea to Kavanagh to contact them if he'd
like changes made in subsequent editions. I thought this was
a neat way of excusing typographical errors and the
occasional lapse, and there were a few, though it's hard to
know if they were deliberate or not.
Kavanagh tells the story, in first person, of Paul Kavanagh,
ex-soldier and failed prospect at "the Agency." After he is
told he isn't what they're looking for, Kavanagh drifts
around, ultimately winding up on a small island in the
Florida Keys, where he indulges his "do nothing" list, 10
suggestions to help him remember how to stay disengaged from
life. When the same operative who explained to Kavanagh
earlier why he'd been rejected shows up on the island with an
offer: split two million dollars after hijacking a shipment
of highly dangerous and secret army weapons, it's surprising
how quickly Kavanagh agrees, though he first nearly drowns
the operative.
The story from there becomes something of a Richard Stark
clone, with Kavanagh impersonating an Agency man at the army
base where the weapons are to be shipped from. As the inside
man, it is his job to determine the schedule, route, etc., of
the shipment and set up the hit. As someone else has
mentioned, though, ultimately this book "out-Starks"
Stark--Kavanagh is much more coldly ruthless-- he and his
partner methodically kill 19 men to carry off their heist,
and there are suggestions that Kavanagh really might be going
crazy.
I was going to ask if there were any additional Kavanagh
books featuring Kavanagh as a character--_The Triumph of
Evil_ has another character, Miles Dorn, I think, as its
lead--but after reviewing my brief plot summary again, I can
see why there probably wouldn't be more Kavanagh/Kavanagh
books. Were there any other Kavanagh books besides these two?
Oh, and the copy I had said that _Such Men Are Dangerous_ was
"soon to be a major motion picture." Did anything ever come
of that?
Craig Larson Trinidad, CO
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