World Pacific

John le Carré meets Evelyn Waugh in Mann’s terrific second novel (after The Torqued Man), set mostly in California on the eve of WWII. Adventurer Richard Halifax, a thinly veiled Richard Halliburton, is presumed to have died in a shipwreck in 1939, until he begins sending off-color tall tales to his Junior Adventurers fan club (“Ah, boys, if you come by a sidekick as good as Roderick, think damn hard before you eat him”). His story intersects with those of painter Hildegard Rauch, the daughter of a famous German writer in exile who brings to mind Thomas Mann, and hapless British intelligence officer Simon Faulk, siloed to California to keep tabs on Nazi sympathizers. In a series of letters to her twin brother, Hank, whose apparent botched suicide attempt has left him in a coma, Hildegard expresses her annoyance at the scandal he caused (“to Werther yourself right out of existence? What a horrible cliché”). Before Hank’s coma, he sent her a cryptic message about Halifax, and she embarks on a quest to solve the mystery. Faulk, meanwhile, tries to out Halifax as a spy. Mann displays an extraordinary comedic gift for outlandish embellishment, and makes hay out of the incompetence and hubris on all sides of the impending war (as Faulk puts it, “The problem with America... is that everything here is a cartoon”). This is a hoot. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Aug.)