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From: ian@loral.UUCP (Ian Kaplan)
Newsgroups: net.books,net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Vengeance by George Jonas
Message-ID: <445@loral.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Aug-84 14:20:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: loral.445
Posted: Fri Aug 24 14:20:55 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Aug-84 01:22:54 EDT
References: <8146@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: Loral Instruments, San Diego
Lines: 31


     I too read Vengeance by Mr. Jonas.  I have been a fan of Mosad spy
     stories, so I bought the book when it first appeared in B. Dalton.
     I found the book interesting and emotionally satisfying.  The
     emotional satisfaction is similar to that provided by a Dirty Harry
     movie.  We are usually helpless victims to such things as street crime
     and terrorism.  In the Dirty Harry movies all the bad guys get killed
     and at an emotional level this diminishes the feeling of helplessness.
     Vengeance proposes a similar solution, the terrorists are not merely
     killed, they are terrorized.  Although this sort of fantasy has some
     emotional appeal I believe that both the path taken by Dirty Harry and
     by the "Mosad agents" would eventually lead to anarchy.  Such a
     situation would be worse than what these acts are designed to
     prevent.
   
     When I read Vengeance I found the description of the French terrorist
     support group to be very implausable.  Since reading the book I read
     two book review, on in the Wall Street Journal and the other in
     Newsweek, which labeled the book as a fraud.  The Journal article
     discussed how the book came to be published and from this discussion I
     believe that the book is a fraud.  The journalist who originally
     agreed to write the book with the "former Mosad agent" declined to
     continue when he found the story changing frequently.  My personal
     view is that Jonas was persuaded to write the book by a large advance.

				      Ian Kaplan
				      ucbvax!sdccsu3!loral!ian

        The views above are, of course, those of the author alone and
	are not necessarily shared by his employer