From Publishers Weekly
Since this reissue of MWA Grandmaster Block's 1968 Evan Tanner thriller lacks the wit and clever plotting that characterize his mature work, this dated tale of picaresque adventure will appeal mainly to Block completists. Tanner, a thief with mysterious connections to the intelligence community who hasn't slept since a freak bullet wound caused permanent insomnia, gets a call that sends him on a whirlwind international escapade. The caller is the mother of an attractive 18-year-old girl who had lived (platonically) with Tanner for a month and is now missing; his search leads him to London and a white slave ring that has been supplying vulnerable young women to a dealer in Afghanistan. Along the way, he swims the English Channel and tangles with a gang of mercenaries seeking to overthrow the regime in Kabul. The Afghanistan setting at least will resonate with today's readers. (Apr. 4)
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Product Description
The CIA, the FBI, the KGB, Interpolβnot one of the world's premier intelligence organizations knows quite what to make of Evan Michael Tanner. Is he a spy, a mercenary, a footloose adventurer, or simply a screwball sucker for hopeless causes?
(Actually he's a little bit of all of the above. Plus he never sleeps. Ever.)
One thing's for sure: Tanner's a true romantic, which is why he can't refuse a distraught mother who begs him to rescue her lost, pure-as-driven-snow daughter. Phaedra Harrow (nee Deborah Horowitz) once shared Tanner's apartment but not his bed. And now the virginal beauty's been abducted by white slavers in the Afghan wilderness.
Finding Phaedra will be difficult enough. Bringing her back alive and unmolested may be impossible. And first Tanner will have to swim the English Channel, survive trigger-happy Russian terrorists . . . and maybe pull off a timely assassination or two.