It’s damn nice to be in the hands of an author who leaves nothing to chance. Who knows how to convey a thought that is deeper than the words he uses to convey it. Consider this sequence: “I couldn’t stand another of those damned prayer sessions without bursting out with the news that I’d been laying his wife so frequently that the only excitement left in it was the increasingly likely possibility that we’d be found out.” The other man, though, is kind and generous, and this quickly follows: “By the time I left I disliked Harding because he had...