This isn't my favorite Robert Heinlein book, and it's not in my opinion his best book, nor his most famous book, but it may very well be his most fun--science fiction writer Brian Aldiss thought so. It's one of only four of Heinlein novels that won him a Hugo in his lifetime. (The others were Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.) Lorenzo Smythe, an actor who bills himself as the "Great Lorenzo" is shanghaied to Mars and offered the role of a lifetime--to impersonate a kidnapped Mars politician and thus avert interplanetary war. The fun comes from seeing Lorenzo grow into, and play, his role. The book isn't perhaps as thought-provoking as Starship Troopers and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but it does have interesting things to say about politics and politicians and has plenty of intrigue and adventure. It's told by Lorenzo himself and he's one of Heinlein's most vivid characters--as befits an actor a fine observer of people around him. The book was published in 1956, and sure, some details social and technological are dated, but it's still tremendously...yeah fun.
