Rogue Male

As anyone who walks into Phinney Books can see, I am very fond of the NYRB Classics series. There are a dozen or two NYRBs I could (and likely will at some point) choose as an Old Book of Week, but Rogue Male is among my favorites. (And it's one I've had a lot of success in recommending to others.) It is, perhaps, the most efficiently thrilling book I know. Published with war looming in 1939, it begins with a strangely offhand assassination attempt on an unnamed European dictator but quickly leaves politics behind for the most elemental struggles of survival, to the point that nearly half the book takes place in a hole in the ground in a country lane. (It's the most exciting part.)