EricCWelch

You may remember Tanner from previous reviews: the spy who can’t sleep. This novel takes place earlier than the one I had read and Block provides a more detailed explanation of just how Tanner got himself into this position ([book:The Thief Who Couldn’t Sleep] is the first in the series and, naturally, has the most detail). Besides the small pension he gets monthly from the government for the head injury that resulted in his inability to sleep, Tanner writes term papers for hire for those students either “a) too lazy, or b) too stupid, or c) both of the above,” to do their own work. He loves doing research anyway and never having to sleep means he has plenty of extra time on his hands (sounds wonderful). He needs the money to pay the memberships and magazine subscriptions for all the tiny little weird organizations he belongs to, such as the Columbian Agrarian Revolutionary Movement (CARM). It’s this latter association that sends him off to Latvia to rescue the beloved of a fellow member of the Latvian Army-in-Exile. It seems that the chief of the organization Tanner reputedly works for, or at least the organization he believes he works for -- it’s so secret that once when in trouble when Tanner claimed to be on assignment for a mysterious chief who worked for the government someone actually believed him, including the chief – and they want him to go to Columbia to suppress CARM’s incipient revolution, something Tanner is loath to do, so he persuades the chief he is already on assignment to Latvia. With everything so secret, who’s to know otherwise?