[A Horse's Head] is a lively, fast-moving tale of big-time robbery in New York City recounted by the innocent victim of an abortive plot to spirit the loot out of the country with a genuine corpse. Instead of becoming the corpse, the narrator has two days of whirlwind chases and hair-breadth escapes from Newark to the lower East Side to the Bronx to the Aqueduct race track…. In the end, when the harassed narrator, who is in fact a book salesman on a year's gambling junket, gets trapped by the crooks, he tosses in his chips and goes back to the loving wife he deserted to make a killing with the big-time gamblers. He is a sort of poor man's James Bond character, and Mr. Hunter combines features of O. Henry, James Thurber, James Joyce, and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." This book has unusual...