Fortune of Fear

The farce continues in this fifth installment of Hubbard's 10-series, Mission Earth. Soltan Gris, the focus here, is the Voltarian Empire's spy chief on Earth. Forever plotting, peeping and trying to manipulate others, double agent Gris is himself the eternal dupe. His crazed schemes to subvert his own agent in the field, virtuous Jettero Heller, keep blowing up in his face. The new chapter, a spoof of free market economics, opens with Gris smuggling 12 tons of goldto pay his credit card bills. Fast-talking bankers soon relieve him of the lucre and he fumes to see Heller raising money for his good deeds from mob-run Atlantic City casinos and commodities trading. This leaden satire gets more outrageous in its sexual aspects, which sound suspiciously like a parody of Scientology (e.g. lesbians who are ""cured'' by being raped). (October)