Agent, The

Out-of-work singer Mike Hennesy knows what desperation feels like: empty pockets, an empty stomach, and the terrible suspicion that the stage has moved on without him. Then Vera, an aging actress who still dreams of leading roles, tells him about a mysterious new agent who can place anyone. Singers, actors, ventriloquists, animal acts, forgotten comics, and every other theatrical leftover crowd into Quontas Quoron’s strange office, each hoping for one more chance. The offer sounds too good to question. No audition. No rejection. Good food, good quarters, and guaranteed work. But Quoron’s office is not what it appears to be, and his clients are not sending performers to any theater Mike has ever known. Soon a room full of hungry has-beens discovers that a signed contract can travel farther than anyone expected. Funny, fast, and full of show-business bite, The Agent turns unemployment, ego, and theatrical ambition into a wonderfully strange trip where even a washed-up crooner may become a sensation. Stephen Marlowe was born Milton Lesser in Brooklyn in 1928 and published widely under several names, including Milton Lesser, C. H. Thames, Adam Chase, and Stephen Marlowe. His early science fiction appeared in venues such as Amazing Stories and the Ziff-Davis magazines, while his later career became strongly associated with crime fiction and the Chester Drum detective novels beginning with The Second Longest Night in 1955. The Agent, first published in 1953 in Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader, shows Marlowe’s gift for comic timing, sharp first-person narration, and a premise that lands its punch before the narrator fully understands the joke.