The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep

Lawrence Block's first novel in his Evan Tanner series, published in 1966, has the insomniac thief scampering back and forth across Europe, fleeing police and searching for a cache of gold. Along the way he sets off a revolution in Macedonia. A page-flipper with a dash of camp.

Nemesis

This Philip Roth novel is earnest, direct, and even a bit old-fashioned. I can imagine this same plot and themes being handled by Dreiser (more expansively) or Anderson (more floridly). The subject is a polio outbreak in Newark in the summer of 1944, so there are also faint echoes of Camus's The Plague. In all, a satisfying and bleak work.

The Humbling

This Philip Roth wet dream is agreeably short, 140 pages, and written with an admirable clarity. A subtitle might be, "There's No Fool Like an Old Fool."

Brief Encounters

The celebrity anecdotes in this Dick Cavett collection of essays are winning, as expected. Unexpected are the vivid and sometimes poignant recollections from a Nebraska adolescence, among them: a William Jennings Bryan statue at the state Capitol vandalized, a bittersweet Christmas story, and driving in freezing rain. I started this book thinking it was too bad there's no one like Cavett on TV today, but there might be when Stephen Colbert takes over the Late Show. Coincidentally in one of these columns written before CBS made that hire, Cavett makes the case for Colbert.

A Delicate Balance

Reading Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance leaves an impression that there is less here than meets the eye. The amateur intellectual matriarch, the drunken sister (comic relief), the petulant, hopeless daughter, the puttering husband, and two strange friends don't up add up to much more than the sum of their parts. Existential dread and a sordid secret can't put enough meat on these bones.

A Crime in Holland

Sending Maigret to Holland gives Simenon a chance to draw contrasts between the Dutch and French in matters of morals, behavior, and food and drink. Love and hate, however, cross all borders. After solving the crime, Maigret's remark is priceless: "And that's all ... What time is the next train for France?"

Night at the Crossroads

As if to prove that Maigret is not always sedentary, this novel has him throwing several punches, jumping into a well, and firing his gun. But these fireworks do not change what is underneath: a detective who has seen it all and who has, as his creator says, a credo of "understand and judge not."  

The Yellow Dog

It was Francois Mitterrand who said that one of the most important attributes of a leader is indifference. By which he meant, I believe, an aloofness to the white noise that will always surround a president. Jules Maigret must agree. He is described in this mystery as a "monument of placidity," and when leaders in a Breton town demand he do something about a series of attacks, his response is to hang up the phone or walk away. Indifferent to the extraneous things, yes, but not to the main game.

The Company of Women

A frank, unsentimental novel centered on sex is rare enough; Kushwant Singh's has the added benefit of providing a window onto Indian life and customs.