It's hard to believe that novels like [The Scarlatti Inheritance] are still appearing in 1971. But maybe you've been longing for a revival of those Lanny Budd goulashes, in which historical figures rub elbow-patches with fictional creations, all of them in the process being rendered not a little incredible: Cordell Hull ("this good and honest old man"), Hess ("darkly cherubic"), Ludendorff, Goebbels ("this unattractive little man"), Hitler ("something cheap about him, something opportunistic"). So it goes. The technique of prefabricated characterization extends even more depressingly to the imaginary figures like old Elizabeth Scarlatti, one of the world's richest women, who is alternately a "legend in her own time," "a crusty, patrician eagle sweeping the infinite meadows of her own particular heaven," and a "cold but intense … killer." Matthew Canfield, minor government field-accountant, is "positive, sure, capable, fun … vulnerable … and expendable." The ultimate computerized product is Heinrich Kroeger (nee Ulster Sterwart Scarlett), now (in 1944) part of Hitler's elite corps, otherwise "the scion of Scarlatti—the charming, handsome graduate of the cotillions, the hero of the Meuse-Argonne … a schizophrenic madman … a fever-ridden clown … a pleasure-seeker."

Put them all together and they spell Saturday night at the old Bijou, complete with Terry-Toons and a Pete Smith specialty, the main feature pulsating like a rusty bellows with high-level financial, international, familial, marital, martial and governmental intrigue and sparked with more stop-action cuts than a Pearl White serial.

This first novel is crammed full of Mark Cross attaché cases, classified memoranda, sealed classified files from the archives of the State Department, code names, briefcases chained to wrists and "slender" manila envelopes.

Upton Sinclair! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: America hath need of thee.