If you can imagine a Woody Allen movie with the screenplay by Kurt Vonnegut, you'll have a good idea of what [P. D. Kimerakov] is like. Unfortunately for us, Mr. Epstein lacks the Vonnegut wit and the spontaneity of Woody Allen to pull it off.

It seems to me that Mr. Epstein has written a spoof on all the Russian spoofs of the sixties (pre-detente era). Pavel Donatovitch Kimerakov, "our hero," is a Russian scientist who is doing secret research on the aging problem that is afflicting Russian astronauts in space. He is sent to America for a gerontologists' convention…. Russian and American agents pop in and out in a myriad of unlikely guises, and some very funny slapstick scenes result. The problem is that these little comedy gems are buried in pages of interminable descriptions, such as two pages on a spider spinning a web, which reminded...