PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

Sorry — but even the voice of the Pulitzer jury cannot make me one of Lanny Budd's fans. This is the fifth in the series — and all the ingredients which apparently made for popularity of the first four are here again. The characters are chiefly old friends; Lanny and Irma are divorced; Trudy and Lanny secretly married — and then she disappears; Beauty continues to hold court on the Riviera; Irma has married her landed aristocrat, and becomes a vocal member of the Cliveden set; and Lanny's closest friends have "gone underground". Lanny turns all efforts into trying to find Trudy and during the period he attempts to carry on as she would have him. He uses his art contacts to keep in touch with the highest officials in the Nazi party, in France, in Germany; he plays up his interest (one is kept in some doubt as to the depth of his sincerity) in psychic phenomena, and eventually makes this a link with Hitler and Hess; he plays both ends against the middle, acting as "Presidential Agent" and getting important data out from neutral countries to F.D.R. — and at the same time, feeding the beast with tidbits (which were probably already known) to keep up the pretense of his own fascistic leanings (and conceal his "pinkness"). There's one hair-breadth escape — a futile gesture — for ultimately he knows that Trudy has died at Daehau. Lanny is given credit for various world-shaping events-, the Quarantine Speech, etc; he has his finger in the Munich-Berchtesgaden — Godesberg affairs. He finds out what he needs to know, and holds on to the long-range view. The story stops short of the invasion of Poland. All the panoply of luxurious living is there; the sense of being at the heart of things. Probably many who get little from the papers will feel better informed on the steps leading to war because of reading these books. It will sell — and rent.