However one reads it, "QB VII" induces tranquility, because a mind absorbed is a body at rest. The question is, How does Leon Uris do it? How does he manage to make so few demands on us in 500 pages? There is art to it. Mr. Uris explains part of the secret about a quarter of the way into "QB VII"—which, by the way, stands for Queen's Bench Courtroom Number Seven, and is, when it eventually gets down to business, a courtroom drama of sorts. Uris's hero is a writer, you see, and he knows a thing or two about writing novels. "And the key trick that few novelists know," Uris explains to us … is that "a novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter."…

[It's] pretty clear that "the key trick" works all sorts...