The Last of Lanny?

O SHEPHERD, SPEAK! (629 pp.)--Upton Sinclair--Viking ($3.50).

For nine volumes and nearly 6,500 pages, countless readers have followed Lanny Budd through the labyrinths of modern politics. Although he passed as a mere art expert, Lanny was really F.D.R.'s Secret Agent No. 103. He could mingle easily with the world's great men, hoodwink Hitler into disclosing secret plans, advise General Patton on military strategy and Harry Hopkins on political tactics, and even win the admiration of Stalin. There was almost nothing that Lanny could not do; under the spell of such a hero, anxiety-ridden readers could begin to feel safe again.

Now in 0 Shepherd, Speak!--the tenth (and "I hope the last," says Upton Sinclair) of the Lanny books--the author has brought his hero's adventures up to date. Apparently working on the reasonable assumption that what has pleased 1,350,000 U.S. and English customers will please them again, Sinclair sticks close to his well-exercised formula. He thrusts Lanny into every important event in the mid-1940s, records the portentous if often empty conversations of the powerful, and buttresses his story at weak points with solid slabs of historical summary.

Help at Yalta. When somebody has to find out whether the Nazis have made an atom bomb, Lanny naturally takes over the interrogation of captured scientists. Satisfied that the Nazis are not even close, he prepares a report for the Boss ("Roosevelt would get one through the Army, of course, but he would be more interested in the statement of a man whom he knew and trusted").

Soon Lanny is helping Harry Hopkins draft the Yalta declaration, warning F.D.R. about the Russians and giving him a few pointers on Marxist theory. More & more, of course, he finds himself worrying about the President's health. After the Boss dies, there is still plenty to do: a trip to Europe to wheedle Goering into revealing the hiding place of the priceless collections of stolen art; a dash back to the U.S. to watch the first atom bomb billow up in the New Mexico sky; a mission to Nuernberg to help convict the war criminals.

Voice from Beyond. When President Truman asks Lanny to undertake just one more mission to Stalin, Lanny lectures the dictator on world peace and leaves him barely able to reply. Author Sinclair also arranges for Lanny to hold an astonishing conversation with the voice of the Boss from the beyond:

Lanny: Tell me, Governor, what shall we do about the Russians?

Voice: Offer friendship and be prepared for whatever comes.

Lanny: You are worried [about the U.S.], Governor?

Voice: There will come a man of the people for the people; and the people will know him.

The critics, who have scoffed at the first nine Lanny books for their cardboard characterizations and their comic-strip simplifications of history, will hardly think better of No. 10. Such objections will continue to leave Upton Sinclair unmoved, since he has magnificently succeeded in what, after all, he set out to do: to write Upton Sinclair's version of history and get millions of people to read it. (Lanny, incidentally, his faith in the future undimmed, decides to devote himself henceforth to humanitarian journalism.)

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