This book is not really a novel in the traditional sense but a collection of eight sophisticated mystery stories narrated by one Tommy (Tip) Paine, namesake of the patriot and present-day scion of a Mainline Philadelphia family.
Paine is an irascible, right-wing, science-fiction/spy novel/movie writer whose tongue-in-cheek exploits include encounters with a Russian KGB man, a self-righteous novelist, phony Hollywood types, foolish rich Texans, murderers in Maine and finally a confrontation with the infamous G. Gordon Liddy in which the author presumes to unravel the mystery of who, in fact, was this century's ultimate fink, Watergate's "Deep Throat."
I have never met the author, but before beginning this book, I recalled his name and pulled from my library shelves a tattered set of galleys I remembered vaguely. Sure enough, they were a decade-old set of proofs of John Calvin Batchelor's voluminous first novel, "The Further Adventures of Halley's Comet."
Inside these galleys was a faded personal note from someone named Virginia, who said, among other things, that she hoped I might enjoy this book, calling it, "sometimes exasperating, sometimes brilliant." I am embarrassed to say I neither remember Virginia nor read the book, but it intrigued me to see how this early assessment of Batchelor's work might stand up after all these years. With this in mind I began the present book.
"Mother Treason" is the first of the stories--the saga of a 12-year-old Philadelphia boy who goes to Russia in the 1960s in a student-exchange program and stays with what is assumed to be a typical Russian family. Young Tip and the family's son Trifya become fast buddies; they keep in touch over the years until Tip finally returns to visit his old pal in present time, only to discover he's become a Soviet agent, now "disappeared." The mystery, of course, is how and why.
In "Hollywood Before the Mast," Tip-the-movie-writer becomes romantically embroiled with a beautiful studio executive who, as the mystery reveals, turns out to have thoroughly re-invented herself from a deprived childhood back East and is passing herself off now as the wealthy offspring of a society family. This story, almost Fitzgeraldian in intensity and wit, unfortunately misses the boat by a year or two, since, in the meantime, Hollywood has itself discovered the intrigue of people re-inventing themselves and the genre has almost become a cliche in the movie business.
