The spy who can’t sleep is back for his fifth adventure in Lawrence Block’s TANNER’S TIGER. There’s no exotic locale this time out, but that won’t stop Evan Tanner from getting into all sorts of situations and encountering a huge obstacle: the dreaded land of Canada.

Yes, our neighbors to the north don’t want Evan Tanner coming into their land of moose and hockey. Tanner is offered a job by his chief that is pretty simple for a man like him: Go to the Montreal Expo and sniff around the Cuban exhibit. It seems there’s something fishy going on there that no one can figure out.

This makes Tanner’s 6-year-old ward Minna excited, since she is a sponge ready to learn anything she can. But as easy as it is for anyone to cross the Canadian border, once Tanner does, he is forced back to the U.S. for the simple reason that he is part of a radical group demanding the independence of Quebec. This group consists of two draft dodgers, an old pal of Tanner’s and a woman who tries her hardest to cuddle up with him.

This is done all with comic effect that makes this series so enjoyable. After a few other tries, our little twosome makes it to Montreal, where on their first day at the Expo, Tanner loses Minna while in the Cuba pavilion. This sets the rest of the book into action, where he tries his hardest to find her. In his search, the local authorities are tipped off that Tanner is in Canada, so our hero runs off to a past friend for help.

Once he arrives, he finds out that the extremist Free Quebec group that Tanner has supported have figured the best way to get its point across: Blow up the Queen of England. No one ever said life was easy for Tanner, and Block just piles the obstacles on top of one of another, with Tanner trying to figure a way to use this deluded group to his own advantage, along with finding Minna and the strange goings-on in the Cuba exhibit.

This is such a change of pace from the typical spy genre; it never takes itself too seriously and that’s why I’m so glad they’ve been reissued. Like the previous books in the series, there is a new afterword from Block, who details the ideas that spawned this book and even the title, since the only tiger in the book is a jacket a woman wears.

TANNER’S VIRGIN is the sixth book; it’s a not a mission-based adventure, but more of a request from an ex-girlfriend’s mother. Mrs. Horowitz’s daughter Deborah has gone missing in England. That name doesn’t ring a bell to Tanner one bit until Mrs. H explains she changed her name to Phaedra Harrow. The reason this girl sticks in Tanner’s mind is that she is the one girl he could never bed – yes, a virgin intent on sticking to that until her wedding day.

Tanner figures he’ll have no problem finding her or what happened to her in England. But here’s a bit of a spoiler: It’s not going to be easy, because Phaedra got suckered into some travel scam in the Middle East where she will end up in a white slavery ring. During this portion, we actually see Tanner turn truly sadistic – a side he’s never shown before. Sure, he’s shot and killed people, but here it’s taken to an extreme in an interrogation scene.

The problem is Tanner figures that England has nothing on him, so leaving a few fingerprints wont be a big deal. Does this man ever learn. Quickly he is on the run over to France, where on the way he is confronted by a group of Russians who he has a bit of a disagreement with and ends up on a long swim in the vacation spot that is Afghanistan.

Countless attempts are made on Tanner’s life, with one sequence that is probably the closest to how anyone really fights. It is probably one of the dirtiest fight moves, but very efficient.

Block pulls out ever spy cliché in this one, knowing full well that they are total clichés, even referencing other spy writers – namely Eric Ambler. The story is so breezily written, you’ll be done with it and want to grab the next one in the series. And that’s what sets apart this series from others: It’s nothing too dour, and Block knows it. He is having fun with these characters and situations, making it entertaining for a reader, rather than a chore to get through.

In the afterword, Block goes over how at this point in the series, he did not even bother to name the books anymore, since some editor would change it. So the original title of this one was TANNER #6 and not what it eventually come out as HERE COMES A HERO. –Bruce Grossman

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• THE BURGLAR IN THE LIBRARY by Lawrence Block
• THE BURGLAR IN THE RYE by Lawrence Block
• THE BURGLAR WHO THOUGHT HE WAS BOGART by Lawrence Block
• A DANCE AT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE by Lawrence Block
• THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART by Lawrence Block
• HIT PARADE by Lawrence Block
• LUCKY AT CARDS by Lawrence Block
• THE SCORELESS THAI by Lawrence Block
• TANNER’S TWELVE SWINGERS by Lawrence Block