The Spy Who Hated Licorice

Cover

Title The Spy Who Hated Licorice

Author Richard L. Hershatter

ISBN 0-595-19387-0

Publisher iUniverse.com, Inc.

Category Fiction: Thriller

Shira's Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)

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What It's About

This is a spy thriller which was originally published in 1966. Set in the Cold War era, it focuses on a plot in which mercenaries are scheming to trigger an international incident, hoping to spark nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The rogue nation that hired them would then be better positioned to seize world power - if, of course, there was any world power remaining after nuclear war. A U.S. spy agency hired the hero of this story to help foil the plot. He was chosen because of his personal ties to someone working for the mercenaries. Along the way, the hero teams up with another agent whose many talents include belly dancing. This is a very slim book, which I read from start to finish in just a couple of days.

Its Good Points

The book was frequently punctuated with humor, especially puns. I found myself chuckling a few times as I read it.

The character who belly danced was portrayed as a smart, competent woman. When you consider that this book was originally written in the 1960's, I was pleasantly surprised that the author wrote the dance scene as if he had actually spent time in clubs that featured belly dancing and took the perspective of a somewhat informed audience member.

On The Negative Side....

I'm not much of a spy thriller person, and normally I wouldn't read a book in this genre. I bought this one because a web bookstore hyped that one of the characters was a belly dancer.

I was disappointed. The character's ability to belly dance really didn't contribute anything to the story, and the only reason I could see for it even being mentioned was that the author wanted to invent an unlikely element to her personality to amuse readers. The one scene in which she danced could easily have been cut without disrupting either the plot or the character development, and her status as a dancer did not come into play again after the one scene except for being mentioned in passing.

I found the plot to be rather predictable. Reading this a couple of decades after the fall of the Berlin wall, the Cold War motif seemed a bit tired.