THE EIGHTH DWARF - ROSS THOMAS

Another short little number in between larger works that I’m trudging through. Actually, it’s been a bit harder to read and find the time to really sit down and engage with a book. These things come in cycles, hopefully we’ll be on an upswing soon. That being said, this was a great little book to tear through. I don’t normally read a lot of what I would call airport-fiction. Thrillers, mysteries, spy stuff, that sort of thing. Nothing majorly against it but I’m not deeply into the genre. However, I do like Ross Thomas, who writes in a sort of spy/mystery mode that I find really interesting. His books are snappy and fun and full of unique color, and also sit adjacent to CIA/noided stuff that is my real bread and butter. This one is no different. It’s about the immediate aftermath of WWII between the end of the OSS and the start of the CIA (which is sort of the deep setting and theme of the novel, not unlike Gravity’s Rainbow) and features a colorful cast of character, including the titular dwarf, who are trying to find a Jewish assassin who is killing Nazi war criminals who have snuck back into society. Various forces are worried or are trying to get him to Mandatory Palestine to assist Jewish terrorist groups like the Stern Gang in order to hasten the creation of Israel. I found the plot really snappy and fun, it moves fast, there are lots of different characters with all sorts of different angles. The dwarf of the title is a Romanian con-man who is always one step ahead of everyone and who’s teamed up with a former OSS officer who’s out of his depth. They were a great pair, I could read a dozen books that feature their dynamic. At one [point he calls the OSS a “collection of savants, con men, playboys, freebooters, patriots, socialists, fools, geniuses, college boys and adventures'' which was a fun description (now, I feel like the list would be much shorter and consist of “dipshits and demons”).  The only problem I had with the book was the ending. Thomas does such a great job balancing all these competing interests and stories and keeps hinting that people are going to betray each other and backstab but when the time comes to confront the person that everyone is looking for (spoiler alert), the assassin just goes insane and is useless. The major betrayal that we were coming to expect is anticlimactic and brushed over quickly. It just didn’t stick the landing for me. All that being said, the world was fun, the writing was snappy.