Ben East Books

Tag: Novel

  • What is the WOT

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    Ben East
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    Three novelists offer their views of Two Pumps for the Body Man, a satire about life on the front line of the War on Terror. …the pace is fast… Two Pumps is a page-turner, baby, and it takes some real balls to satirize the great Christian crusade of our times. …a wry ode to the cluster-f*** of…

  • Mission Accomplished

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    Ben East
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    War Novels for the War on Terror Thirteen years ago Sunday former President George Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Over his head a massive banner proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.” What followed this publicity stunt—he arrived on an aircraft carrier off the coast of California riding in a Navy jet—were years of insurgency…

  • Review: The Brothers Connolly

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    Ben East
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    Ted Prokash employs a rich, poetic voice to tell his story of middle America, giving The Brothers Connolly the quality of an epic. His narrator breaks this novel free of its small-town confines. The writing, here, is the main event. Prokash is skillful and convincing in his portrayal of life in Napawaupee, Wisconsin. He renders with equal…

  • A Catch-22 for Diplomacy

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    Ben East
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    Two Pumps for the Body Man Set in Saudi Arabia, Two Pumps does for American diplomacy and the War on Terror what Catch-22 did for military logic during the Second World War: The enemy can’t kill us if our institutions kill us first. Jeff Mutton walks the diplomatic beat protecting American officials in Saudi Arabia.…

  • Coming Very Soon

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    Ben East
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    The Second World War II had Catch 22. The Global War on Terror will have:

  • Foreign Service Writers

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    Ben East
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    The March issue of the Foreign Service Journal covers the annual book fair and includes a call for FS-affiliated writers to submit news of forthcoming and recently published books for the November round up. Authors are also invited to submit work for review on this blog: I recently reviewed retired FSO James F. O’Callaghan’s No Circuses. See below. From the FSJ…

  • Review: Foreign Service Fiction

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    Ben East
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    Anyone who thinks diplomacy is about choosing the right fork at the right time should think again and read James O’Callaghan’s clever satire No Circuses (Tacchino Press, 2015). Forget preconceived notions of dinner-party diplomacy: keeping one’s elbows off the table, tangoing the rival into submission, and writing it up the next day in communiqués to DC. What diplomacy’s really about, in O’Callaghan’s world,…

  • Work out! Rock out! Write on!

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    Ben East
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    Here’s an inspiration to kick off the new year. John Grisham built a reputation as a writer (love him, hate him, it’s unimportant) by turning tax lawyers into the kind of people who drive fast cars, plot murders, and enjoy lives of sinister intrigue. Tax lawyers. Whatever you do for a living, it’s got to be more…

  • San Francisco: Crime and Baseball

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    Ben East
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    San Francisco–can you get any stranger? Spiked baseball bats chained to parking meters all over town. They appeared, 27 of them, on Thanksgiving: preparations for the Black Friday zombie shopper apocalypse? Speaking of crime, baseball, and the City by the Bay: check out Tom Pitts’ Knuckleball… The whole city of San Francisco wants a cop-killer caught. Over…

  • Debut San Francisco Cyber-Noir

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    Ben East
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    Mark Richardson’s Hunt for the Troll (New Pulp Press) is a step up from ordinary pulp. It’s what happens to San Francisco noir when the shiny new promise of Silicon Valley comes to town, pushing back the fog to play some light in the corners. In this case, the light is more ominous than the dark. Our…