This is the third in Blocks Tanner series. They were written in the 1960s and five years ago would have been thought dated - now with film versions of Mission Impossible, The Saint and The Avengers in vogue Tanner could become hip.
The mission is for Tanner to cross communist Europe enter the Soviet Union and liberate a beautiful ballet dancer. This task is made more difficult by the Yugoslav dissident, Latvian heiress and dance troop that is collected along the way. It would be giving nothing away to say that Tanner accomplishes his mission but the way he achieves this is remarkable and entertaining.
A portion of this book is set in Latvia and Estonia when they were part of the USSR. It is worth reading the book to hear some of the comments about how these two countries would never achieve independence. Cold war fever at its height. This is never going to be known as a Block masterpiece but is worth a couple of hours of anybody's time, a commuter special.
