Books: Opp

THE POOL OF MEMORY —E. Phillips Oppenhelm—Little, Brown ($3).

E. Phillips Oppenheim, author of 111 of the most popular novels ever written about international intrigue and espionage, got his diplomatic training in the wholesale leather trade. Unless this volume of his reminiscences is hiding state secrets, the nearest he ever came to the world he wrote about was a short stretch of propaganda writing for one of the British special services during World War I. The peculiar Oppenheim blend of dispatch-box atmosphere, femmes fatales, double traitors, and a tight plot totting up to eventual victory for the British Intelligence—most of it...