Richard Condon has tireless wit (though sometimes it fatigues the reader) and must enjoy what he is doing without necessarily believing it. And what he does can be fun—Nabokov without tears. (p. 10)

From internal evidence, one judges that [Condon] knows full well what he is doing, even if he might prefer to be doing something wise rather than shrewd. He bills ["Bandicoot"] as the companion to "Arigato," which is one I missed; but burrowing "as fast as a man can dig"—as in the description of the Australian rodent, the bandicoot, printed in the front of the book—I seemed to make sufficient sense, or nonsense, of an entertainer's latest entertainment.

Here … we have world travel, the famous and the rich, the powerful and the wicked, plus the usual food, drink and girlish meat-strudel of a Condon concoction. A certain megapop tic limits any commitment. We suspend...