SOURCE: Guy, David. “Secrets and Lies.” Washington Post Book World (12 November 2000): 8.

In the following laudatory review, Guy explores the many deceptions and hidden lives in Busch's Don't Tell Anyone.

My favorite piece in this collection of expert stories [Don't Tell Anyone] is the last one, a mid-length novella entitled “A Handbook for Spies.” Willie Bernstein is an English instructor in upstate New York in the '60s. He is dodging the draft and trying to figure out who he is, so hapless that he doesn't even know that his instructor status is itself a draft deferment; he doesn't need another.

Into his life walks the daughter of one of the full professors. Tanya Fevler—who calls herself Tony—is “two years younger than Willie, and a century more experienced.” She is also the wife of a Vietnam vet whom she claims has been horribly disfigured, though there's plenty...