Word: spada
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...least not in the pasteboard parable that West contrives. John Spada. an Italian American, runs his multinational conglomerate in the style of a medieval prince, but he is also, in the best potboiler parlance, "a man living a double life." When not wheeling and dealing, he heads Proteus, an apparently vast and clandestine club that liberates political prisoners. Proteus prefers handing out carrots to achieve its ends, but will use the stick when other means fail. Spada's crusade becomes a vendetta when his daughter and her Argentine husband are arrested in Buenos Aires and brutalized by security police...
West's neatest trick, though, is reserved for the end. One of the things that Spada demands, as the price for not poisoning mankind, is permission to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. In real life, of course, he could do so and no one would notice, but West ignores this for the sake of his artifice. The resulting episode is thus one of the neatest bits of whimsical invention since A.A. Milne created the heffalump...