Any God Will Do

Cover of the 1966 Random House first edition.

Any God Will Do, first published by Random House in 1966, is the sixth book by the American satirist and political novelist Richard Condon. After the almost unmitigated grimness of his previous book, An Infinity of Mirrors, it was a return to his more usual light-heartedness as displayed in works such A Talent for Loving. Although its theme is madness, unusually for Condon it has little of the almost gratuitous scenes of violence and sudden deaths that punctuate most of his books—the only notable instance being that of a haughty French sommelier who shoots himself at an aristocratic dinner party when he discovers that an American guest is indeed correct in asserting that a great white Burgundy can accompany young spring lamb.

Title

The title, as is the case in six of Condon's first seven books, is derived from the last line of a typical bit of Condonian doggerel that supposedly comes from a fictitious Keener's Manual mentioned in many of his earlier novels:

Interest is the key to life,

Interest in the clue,

Interest is the drum and fife

And any god will do.

The verse is found in only one place, as an epigraph on a blank page four pages after the title page and two pages before the beginning of the text. Unlike some of Condon's other books, however, in which the verse is clearly relevant to the theme of the book, this particular title, Any God Will Do, has no apparent relevance to what happens in the course of the novel.

See also

• Crime fiction/Catalog of prominent writers