title: The Quest for Anna Klein: An Otto Penzler Book
author:  Thomas H. Cook 
description: At the start of Edgar-winner Cook's thoughtful if less than inspired thriller, Paul Crane, a young American intelligence operative, interviews 91-year-old Thomas Jefferson Danforth at Manhattan's Century Club. Danforth, who believes he has something to offer the government following the recent 9/11 terrorist attacks, tells Crane about a long-ago threat related to Nazi Germany. Flashback to 1939 when Danforth, then a wealthy New Yorker running an importing business with connections throughout Europe, is recruited by his socialite friend and State Department spy, Robert Clayton, for "the Project." This espionage operation involves Anna Klein, a beautiful, accomplished, and mysterious woman, whom Clayton arranges for Danforth to meet in a bar. It's a terrific premise, as if Alan Furst were writing about Mata Hari, but Cook (The Last Talk with Lola Faye) focuses more on finding meaning in the story than on the story itself. Too much cross-cutting between the mostly irrelevant framing narrative and the more compelling core of the novel doesn't help. (June)
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  # The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Alfred Lichtenstein
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  The Winner
  
  
  II
  
  
  III
  
  
  IV
  
  
  The Café Klösschen
  
  
  II
  
  
  III
  
  
  IV
  
  
  The Virgin
  
  
  The Suicide of the Pupil Mueller
  
  
  Mieze Maier
  
  
  Kuno Kohn
  
  
  Mabel Meier
  
  
  Siegmund Simon
  
  
  The Friend
  
  
  Konrad Krause
  
  
  The Family
  
  
  Leopold Lehmann
  
  
  Conversation about Legs
  
  
  II
  
  
  Savior of the theater
  
  
  CHAPTER FROM A FRAGMENTARY NOVEL
  
  
  Collapse of the Famous Dancer Lola Lalà
  
  
  NOTES ABOUT THE NOVEL
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  
  This etext was produced by Michael Pullen, globaltraveler5565@yahoo.com.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### The Winner
  
  
  
  
  
  Max Mechenmal was an independent manager of a newspaper kiosk. He
  
  
  ate and drank well; he had relations with many women, but he was
  
  
  careful. Because his salary was insufficient, he occasionally
  
  
  permitted himself to take money from Ilka Leipke. Ilka Leipke was an
  
  
  unusually small, but well-developed, elega