Books, Arts & Manners: Undownputtable

Mongoose, R.I.P., by William F. Buckley Jr. (Random House, 322 pp., $17.95)

I generally eschew “faction”—historical novels, what-if books, and the like—on the grounds that, as with Grape Nuts, breadfruit, and Christian Science, they are neither one thing nor the other. This latest book in the Blackford Oakes series, however, is so clever a blend of what we know happened in 1962 and 1963, and what we would like to know, and what maybe the author alone knows, that we are totally flimflammed, and disbelief not only is suspended, it flies out the window in the first chapters, never to return. The best of the Blacky books, this is an entertainment of the Graham Greene order that truly entertains, excites, and edifies.

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Barnaby Conrad

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Mongoose, R.I.P., by William F. Buckley Jr. (Random House, 322 pp., $17.95)

I generally eschew “faction”—historical novels, what-if books, and the like—on the grounds that, as with Grape Nuts, breadfruit, and Christian Science, they are neither one thing nor the other. This latest book in the Blackford Oakes series, however, is so clever a blend of what we know happened in 1962 and 1963, and what we would like to know, and what maybe the author alone knows, that we are totally flimflammed, and disbelief not only is suspended, it flies out the window in the first chapters, never to return. The best of the Blacky books, this is an entertainment of the Graham Greene order that truly entertains, excites, and edifies.