The author who writes under the name of Trevanian is primarily interested in giving the reader a good time, and he resoundingly succeeds in ["The Eiger Sanction," a] book about a professional assassin (in government employ) out on a job. But this particular agent is a highly-cultured professor of art, a skilled mountain climber, a demon with the ladies and a murderous, pitiless infighter.

Trevanian goes about everything skillfully. There is plenty of action, plenty of sex, some rather bright dialogue, and a quality of intelligence that makes "The Eiger Sanction" a little more than another post-Fleming exercise in mayhem. Trevanian has a lot of fun making up names for his characters. Most of those names have sexual connotations: George Hotfort (a woman), Randie Nickers (another woman), Anna Bidet. The hero's name, by the way, is Jonathan Hemlock. Read the book and see why.

Newgate Callendar, in a...