Customer Reviews

Dunn's Conundrum

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"Stan Lee" (born Stanley Martin Lieber) is unrelated to the advertising executive Stanley R. Lee, who wrote the novels Dunn's Conundrum (1985) and The God Project (1990) under the name "Stan Lee".

In 1984 Harper & Row published Lee's political thriller "Dunn's Conundrum" which sold respectably well and was also optioned as a film property. In 1990 Grove / Atlantic published another political thriller by Lee titled "The God Project" that featured an advertising man with unique skills who is recruited by the President of the United States to work on a special mission (shades of DDB in '64?). According to Lee's widow, Bernice Lee, the author was working on a non-fiction novel about the military when he died after falling in their apartment in 1997.

It was supposedly also scripted as a movie with Chevy Chase called "The Garbageman" ...

The Chines translator is the best bit.

This is one of the most intelligently written thrillers I've read in ages. The action is exciting, the techno-talk satisfying and not overdone, and the general writing and play of mind mean you don't have to put your own wits entirely to sleep to enjoy the book, as you do with many thrillers. True, it gets a touch preachy towards the end, but only a little. The book is o.p. but worth looking for!

Dunn's Conundrum (1985) is one of those exceptional finds that restores my faith in the charity shop book rack.

First, to clear away any misconceptions, this is not the Stan Lee that appears in all those awful Marvel movies, this is a completely different Stan Lee - an advertising man, in fact, who wrote a couple political thrillers in his spare time.

In fact, if you had to compare this Stan Lee to someone in the comics industry, the best choice would be Warren Ellis. Dunn's Conundrum is a tangled, blackly comedic thriller about espionage and the dangers of information. Certainly there's great power AND great responsibility involved, but there's also a lot of musing about the future of technology, the danger of too much knowledge and some really kinky sex. Ellis would be pleased. Stan Spider-Lee would be greatly disapproving. Not enough running around in pyjamas.

Dunn is the founder and leader of The Library, a super-duper-covert US intelligence organization that sorts through all the data gathered by everyone, everywhere. (In 1985, Lee has written the sort of organization that all the politicians really wanted after 9/11.) The Library contains 12 "librarians", each an expert in a field of intelligence gathering - from field operations to satellite surveillance. All twelve have access to everything. In high-powered brainstorms, they come up with solutions and strategies that shape (and shake) the world. Pretty awesome.

Unfortunately for Dunn, one of his 12 is a rotten egg. Which leads to his conundrum... how does he find a spy in his own ranks? And how does he even start an investigation when everyone knows everything? Theory and practice collide.

The book's protagonist is "The Garbageman", the Librarian appointed to solve this particular issue. He's a specialist in trash - one glimpse into a pile of garbage, and he knows all there is to know. Unfortunately, now he's forced to specialize in another type of rubbish as well - the personal lives of his co-workers.

The plot thickens with bonkers Chinese agents, an ambitious Senator, the onset of World War 3 and a sinister Russian impersonator. For a book without a drop of action, everything moves extraordinarily quickly.

Advertiser-turned-writer, an academic hero, debates about information culture, political prescience and tongue-in-cheek humor - this ticked all the right boxes, and did so in a stylish, goofy, wonderful way. A real find.

This is one of my favorite thrillers. It is in the Robert Ludlum style but with a sence of humor rarely seen in spy thrillers. A geat read that will not disapoint. What will disapoint is the Stan Lee has not followed up with another book chosing to make a fortune writing comic books.