The mixing of historical and fictional characters and historical and fictional events has enjoyed a recent vogue in American fiction. It is one well-suited to Smith's style: His novels have always displayed a thorough knowledge of more or less esoteric matters — Gypsy lore, bats and Indians, life in Moscow. Stallion Gate applies this research method to recreating a historical context. Selecting a crucial moment in history, Smith has crafted an intelligent novel which becomes neither a sophomoric melodrama nor a thinly fictionalized lecture on bomb-makers and bomb-making (nor a simplistic sermon on evil scientists and good Indians).

There is, instead, enough drama (enough character, setting, and plot) and enough lecture. The thematic conflicts, while not subtle, emerge concretely and organically within the drama.

The structure of the narrative also merits comment. Simple chronology governs the overall shape. The action begins in November 1943, when Capt.

Augustino recruits Joe...