**
Vaguely anti-war novel about Colonel Hudson Kane, who comes to a California mansion as a famous psychologist tasked with "curing" its nutty Air Force inmates, among whom is the astronaut who flaked out prior to America's first mission to the moon. Kane, however, doesn't much act like a psychologist and Cutshaw, the astronaut, doesn't appear to be entirely batty. The last of three comic novels Blatty wrote before The Exorcist, and a particularly lazy one at that, relying for its humor on the antics of a group of people who are either insane or pretending to be. Interesting nevertheless if read as an absurd blueprint for The Exorcist: all the obsessions that led Blatty to write his most famous novel are present here -- from the simple love of movies to the coexistence of evil and a benevolent God; everything, in fact, including a discussion of possession and exorcism. Readers of The Exorcist will note that Blatty even uses an astronaut in both.
Vaguely anti-war novel about Colonel Hudson Kane, who comes to a California mansion as a famous psychologist tasked with "curing" its nutty Air Force inmates, among whom is the astronaut who flaked out prior to America's first mission to the moon. Kane, however, doesn't much act like a psychologist and Cutshaw, the astronaut, doesn't appear to be entirely batty. The last of three comic novels Blatty wrote before The Exorcist, and a particularly lazy one at that, relying for its humor on the antics of a group of people who are either insane or pretending to be. Interesting nevertheless if read as an absurd blueprint for The Exorcist: all the obsessions that led Blatty to write his most famous novel are present here -- from the simple love of movies to the coexistence of evil and a benevolent God; everything, in fact, including a discussion of possession and exorcism. Readers of The Exorcist will note that Blatty even uses an astronaut in both.
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