SOURCE: "Whatever Leila Wants …," in Book World—The Washington Post, November 29, 1992, p. 9.

In the review below, Cantor analyzes the plot of The Venerable Bead.

Even in the more than 10,000 words The Washington Post has provided for me to review Richard Condon's new novel, The Venerable Bead, I couldn't possibly summarize the plots within plots that Condon invents in order to reveal what is really already happening to us, those open secrets and purloined letters that are the nightly news.

Leila Aluja, our main character (or should I say characteroid, or center of narrative interest?), is first of all a secret agent for the international security firm that runs the recently privatized FBI, CIA and KGB. In her efforts to crack the Albanian spy network that runs Hollywood talent agencies on behalf of the Communist Chinese, she becomes a movie star; and then a pop queen; and then a...