Book Review: Two For Tanner

Reviewed By: Jaynie - Australia

Two For Tanner    
Lawrence Block
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Evan Tanner # 4
1968, No Exit, 160 pages/ £4.99

Evan Tanner receives a postcode from his latest girlfriend Tuppence Ngawa who is in Bangkok on a singing gig. Tanner suspects trouble and he flies to the rescue as only Tanner can. Disguised as a butterfly collector walking through the forests of Thailand, Tanner is captured by a guerrilla group and held captive in a cage. He is unable to stand up or lie down, and opportunities for escape are slim. Tanner befriends Dhang; a young Siamese man who agrees to help if Tanner can get him a woman. The young man is a virgin and wants to overcome that problem as soon as possible.

Hilarious antics ensue as Tanner tries to help Dhang get laid and the obstacles they have to overcome get worse. Dhangs only English is the words for various body parts and sexual acts, accented of course, to make them sound funnier than reality. The adventure culminates in Dhang being arrested for trying it on with the daughter of a Police Commandant and being thrown in the same prison where Tuppence is held. Tanner breaks them out with the help of an old anti-communist French supporter. By this stage Tanner is gripped with fever, and the three of them sail off down a river to find themselves smack in the middle of North Vietnam being bombed by an American fighter pilot. Block uses the geography to give a small lecture, through Tanner, on the Vietnam War; remembering that this book was written in the mid-sixties.

Lawrence Block had originally named this book The Scoreless Thai and that old title fits a lot better than Two for Tanner. When Block re-released the book in hardback in 2001 he used the original title. It is #4 in this series about a man who never sleeps due to his sleep center being shot out in the Korean War. He is now a sometimes American spy with ties to all sorts of weird and wonderful special interest groups around the world with a flair for languages. Each book he travels to an exotic location to do some damage with the locals. This is one of the funniest yet in this series which seems to get better with age. If you want to see how Lawrence Block became a master of the genre, read Tanner.

Jaynie - Australia

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jaynie - Australia

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