Books: A Shortage of Cats

A TALENT FOR LOVING (267 pp.)— Richard Condon—McGraw-Hill ($4.95).

Disciples are the undoing of holy men, and so it is with Richard Condon, a talented and satirical fantast whose fiercely proselytizing followers regard him as the fifth hoarse man of the Apocalypse. A Condon novel has the sound and shape of a bagful of cats. In The Oldest Confession, The Manchurian Candidate and Some Angry Angel, Condon garnered fans with accounts, written in messianic exasperation, of criminal endeavor, fate's falling cornices, widespread venality, the search for truth, Chinese torture practices, and the love of good women. The sort of nuance that drives...