Category Archives: Fiction

Book Review: A Time To Remember by Stanley Shapiro

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My aunt has always been a prodigious reader and, when I was growing up, I always enjoyed looking through the stacks of books that she had sitting in the closets of her room. A few years ago, for medical reasons, my aunt had to move out of her house. Because she wouldn’t have room for all of her books in her new place, she gave the majority of them to me. So far, I’ve only read a few but, over the course of this year, I plan to read all of them and review the ones that I like or, at the very least, find interesting. That was one of the resolutions that I made on January 1st and I have to admit that I haven’t really been doing a great job keeping up with it.  Hopefully, I’ll do better during the second half of the year.

This week, from my aunt’s book collection, I read Stanley Shapiro’s A Time To Remember.

A Time To Remember was originally published in 1986 and it tells a story that might sound a little bit familiar.  David Russell is a school teacher in Dallas.  He is haunted by the death of his brother, who was killed in Vietnam.  David has convinced himself that, if John F. Kennedy had lived, America would have withdrawn from Vietnam and his brother would still be alive.  In fact, as far as David is concerned, America itself would be a better place if Kennedy had lived.  Not only would the Vietnam War have been prevented but the Watergate break-in would never have occurred.  Nixon would never have been president.  Martin Luther King would never have been assassinated.  Robert F. Kennedy would still be alive.  Americans would never have become disillusioned with their country or their government.  America would have kept its innocence.

Too bad that David can’t do anything to change history.

Or can he?  It turns out that David’s girlfriend is a reporter and she knows a scientist named Dr. Hendrik Koopman.  Koopman has created a time machine!  David uses the machine to go to the past, intent on preventing Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating Kennedy.  (Sorry, conspiracy folks.  Like me, A Time To Remember is firmly in the Oswald Acted Alone camp.)  Unfortunately, David doesn’t succeed and he ends up getting arrested in Oswald’s place!  Now, David has to not only escape but he also still has to find a way to save Kennedy!

Obviously, the plot is a bit similar to Stephen King’s 11/23/63.  That’s not to say that King deliberately plagiarized or even knew of the existence of Shaprio’s earlier novel.  Not only do the two books take vastly different approaches to the material but the idea of saving America by saving JFK has long been a popular one amongst the boomers.  That said, it’s interesting that it was King, who plays the epitome of a committed 60s liberal on Twitter, who wrote the book that was more skeptical about whether or not saving Kennedy would truly save the world.  Shapiro takes a much simpler approach to the material, one that’s almost charmingly naïve.  I’m fairly agnostic on whether or not JFK would have been a transformative or even a well-remembered President if he had lived but one doesn’t necessarily have to buy into the mythology that’s sprung up around JFK to appreciate the sincerity of Shapiro’s idealization of the man and the era that he represented.  Just as 11/23/63 was redeemed by King’s cynicism, A Time To Remember is redeemed by Shapiro’s nostalgia.

Shapiro, it should be noted, also tells his story far more quickly and far more economically than King did.  11/23/63 runs for close to 900 pages.  A Time To Remember doesn’t even make it to 200.  It’s a book that you can read in one sitting and Shapiro keeps the story moving at a quick pace.  Though the characters aren’t particularly deep and one can certainly debate the book’s conclusion, Shapiro tells the story well.  Those who like to play “What If?” with history will appreciate the book.

Novel Review: The Plot To Kill The President by Jack Pearl

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

President Harmon Stevens is a liberal who is looking to reign in the influence of the Military-Industrial complex and the CIA.  So, of course, it’s decided that the President must be taken care of.

Fortunately for the conspirators, back when Stevens was in the army, he took part in the court martial of a soldier named Paul.  Paul was given a dishonorable discharge on account of killing enemy POWs.  The reader is told that Stevens shouted, “You have the Mark of Cain on you!,” which …. okay.  I guess it’s possible that someone outside of 17th century Massachusetts spoke like that.  Now, Paul spends all of his time feeling bitter and watching cartoons.  He’s a Bugs Bunny fan because he believes that Bugs is a sociopath, just like him.  (Personally, I think Bugs is just a force of chaos.  Sociopath is a bit extreme.)  One day, Paul’s cartoon watching is interrupted by the opportunity to take part in a plan to take out Stevens.  However, Paul soon discovers that he’s being set up to be a patsy, much like Lee Harvey Oswald.  Will Paul risk his life to reveal the truth?

The Plot To Kill The President is one of the many paperbacks that I found in my aunt’s collection of old books.  It was originally published in 1972 and it’s very much a book that was inspired by the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy theories surrounding it.  Paul is a disillusioned American.  It’s not just that he has a personal grudge against the President.  It’s that he no longer believes in the promise of America and, as a result, he has no problem with the idea of betraying it.  It’s not until an awkwardly written date with a recently naturalized citizen that Paul starts to realize that America can be saved.  (How awkward is the encounter?  At one point, Paul’s date recites the pledge of allegiance in the middle of a restaurant.)

Anyway, it’s a fairly silly and overheated book.  It’s written in the first person, so we’re not only subjected to Paul as a character but we’re also forced to spend way too much time in his head.  Paul is one of those people who has a lot of ideas but none of them are particularly interesting.  Before I started writing this review, I looked up the book online and I came across someone speculating that Jack Pearl was a pen name for Jack Ruby!  Actually, Jack Pearl was a journalist who wrote several paperback thrillers.  He also wrote a non-fiction book about the JFK assassination, in which he supported the idea that Oswald was a part of a larger conspiracy.  That’s not surprising.  The Plot To Kill The President was clearly written by a true believer, even if it’s never as convincing as it tries to be.

Probably the most interesting thing about the novel is that the copy that I read had a cigarette advertisement inserted into the middle of it.  It was for Kent cigarettes and featured attractive people laughing while holding cigarettes.  They all had perfectly white teeth, without a hint of nicotine staining.  I’ve noticed that quite a few 70s paperbacks came with cigarette ads.  I always wonder how effective they were.  In 1972, was anyone reading The Plot To Kill The President and thinking to themselves, “Damn, I need a cigarette?”

Book Review: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After having watched the film version a few hundred times, I figured that it was time for me to sit down and actually read Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero. 

First published in 1985 (and written when Ellis was only 19 years old and still a college student), Less Than Zero tells the story Clay.  Clay is a rich college student who returns home to Los Angeles for winter break.  It’s his first time to be back home since starting college and he quickly discovers that all of his old friends are, for the most part, hooked on drugs and self-destruction.  Clay’s friend Rip deals drugs and buys underage sex slaves.  Clay’s former best friend, Julian, is now a heroin addict who has sex for money.  Clay’s other best friend, Trent, is a model who watches snuff films.  Meanwhile, Clay’s girlfriend, Blair, isn’t even sure that she likes Clay.  Clay goes to therapy and the therapist tries to sell his screenplay.  Clay struggles to tell apart his two sisters and he rarely speaks to his mother or his father.  He’s haunted by memories of his grandmother slowly dying of cancer.  As winter break progresses, Clay finds himself growing more and more alienated from everyone and everything around him.  He feels less and less.

I had often heard that the film version was dramatically different from the book but nothing could prepare me for just how different.  In the film, Clay is an anti-drug crusader who reacts to everything that he sees in Los Angeles with self-righteous revulsion.  In the book, Clay simply doesn’t care.  Clay’s narration is written in a flat, minimalist style, one that makes Clay into a dispassionate observer.  Over the course of the narrative, there are times that Clay obviously know that he should probably feel something but he just can’t bring himself to do it.  Even when he objects to Rip buying a 12 year-old sex slave, Clay doesn’t do anything to stop Rip or to help his victim.  Clay is the epitome of someone who has everything but feels nothing.  Most of the memorable things that happen in the movie — Julian begging his father for forgiveness and money, Clay and Blair being chased by Rip’s goons, Julian dying in the desert — do not happen in the book.  They couldn’t happen in the book because all of those scenes require the characters to have identifiably human reactions to the things that they’re seeing around them.

It’s not necessarily a happy book but, fortunately, it’s also a frequently (if darkly) funny book.  Bret Easton Ellis has a good ear for the absurdities of everyday conversation and some of the book’s best moments are the ones that contrast Clay’s lack of a reaction to the frequently weird things being discussed around him.  Even more importantly, it’s a short book.  Just when you think you can’t take another page of Clay failing to care that everyone around him will probably be dead before they hit 30, the story ends.  Ellis writes just enough to let the reader understand Clay’s world and then, mercifully, the reader is allowed to escape.

Just as the movie is definitely a product of its time, the same can be said of the original novel.  Reading Less than Zero is a bit like stepping into a time machine.  It’s a way to experience the coke-fueled 80s without actually traveling to them.

Book Review: Beowulf by Anonymous

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow, what an annoying book!

First published in 975, Beowulf tells the story of a Danish king named Hrothgar who can’t be bothered to be a good neighbor.  The loud parties at his mead hall ends up annoying both Grendel and his mother so Grendel takes it open himself to start killing Hrothgar’s men.  Hrothgar and his men are forced to abandon their mead hall …. which, well, that would be the solution right there, wouldn’t it?  I mean, they could just go somewhere where there isn’t a monster living nearby and build a new mead hall.  And maybe they could establish some new mead hall rules, like “Keep it down after 10 pm” and “You Don’t Have To Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here.”  But instead, Hrothgar decides to cry about it.  Seriously, dude, it’s just a mead hall!

Anyway, this jerk named Beowulf sails over to help out Hrothgar.  But before Beowulf can help out Hrothgar, he has to spend a lot of time bragging on himself and telling everyone that he’s the greatest warrior that has ever lived.  I mean, he goes on for so long that I was wondering if maybe he was just planning on boring everyone to death.  Beowulf goes on to kill Grendel with his bare hands and then, when Grendel’s mother complains, Beowulf kills her too.  Uhmmm …. yay, I guess.

Many years later, Beowulf is the king and one of his slaves steals a gold cup from a dragon.  Needless to say, the dragon is not happy about this and really, who can blame it?  I imagine that dragons spend a lot of time collecting their gold and it’s always struck me as odd that humans seem to think that they have the right to just steal from the dragons whenever they feel like it.  With the dragon threatening his kingdom, Beowulf has to come out of retirement to fight one final beast….

The main problem with Beowulf is that the main character is kind of a jerk and he has a really bad habit of bragging on himself.  If I was one of his subjects, I would dread having to ask him for help because Beowulf is apparently incapable of just doing something without using it as an excuse to puff himself up.  Instead, he has to brag about how he’s the only person in the world who could possibly do it and, to top it all off, he has to make everyone else feel bad about the fact that they’re having to ask Beowulf for a favor.  Beowulf is such a long-winded jerk that he makes Grendel and the Dragon seem sympathetic by comparison.

I’m not surprised that the author of Beowulf is anonymous.  Who would want to take credit for this?  For a far better look at life in the 8th Century, check out John Gardner’s Grendel.  Or go watch the Robert Zemeckis-directed 2007 film adaptation, which has its flaws but also features Angelina Jolie, Crispin Glover, Anthony Hopkins, and John Malkovich!  How can you wrong with a cast like that?

Novel Review: Oath of Office by Steven J. Kirsch

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last week, I returned to exploring my aunt’s old collection of paperback books and I read Oath of Office, a political thriller that was originally published way back in 1988.

U.S. Sen. Jonathan Starr has just been elected to the presidency of the United States of America.  As the first Jewish person to win the presidency, Starr is set to make history as soon as he’s sworn in.  However, there’s a problem.  Starr’s been kidnapped!  The morning after his upset victory, Starr finds himself in the trunk of a car and later confined to a cell.  With no knowledge of who has kidnapped him or what his ultimate fate is going to be, Starr can only wait and have numerous flashbacks to the events that led to him winning the presidency.

Meanwhile, the man that Starr defeated, President Sutherland, is trying to figure out who is behind the kidnapping.  Was Starr abducted by the Russians?  Or perhaps the kidnapping is the work of one of the Middle Eastern terrorist groups who is trying to thwart Sutherland’s efforts to bring peace to region?  Maybe it’s the senator from Texas whose dialogue consists of stuff like, “Ah’ve been workin’ on this deal …. we’ll git it through befo’ the election.”  (That’s an actual quote from the book, by the way.  It seems like it would have been simpler just to say that the man had an accent but some writers just have to be cute about things.)  There’s a lot of possibilities but we know that Starr’s kidnapping was masterminded by an imprisoned mobster, largely because the book tells us early on.  I personally would have dragged out the suspense but no matter!

While secret service agent Andy Reynolds is trying to track Starr down, the Speaker of the House is plotting to take power for himself.  He and his people have come across what they believe to be a loophole in the Constitution, which will keep the electoral college from being able to vote for either Starr or his running mate.  In which case, the Speaker will automatically become president as soon as the incumbent’s term expires.  So, yes, this is another political thriller where the plot largely hinges on a reading of the Constitution that any halfway experienced attorney would easily be able to shoot down.

As you can probably guess, this book has its flaws.  According to the blurb on the back, this was the author’s first novel and I have no idea if he ever wrote a second one.  There are a lot of points in the story that don’t ring true, especially in the flashbacks to Starr’s early political career and the author has a bad habit of telling us things as opposed to showing them.  And, of course, there’s that terrible attempt to capture the Texas accent.  Don’t even get me started on that. 

That said, the idea behind the book is an interesting one.  Only two people of Jewish descent have ever been nominated by a major political party.  Barry Goldwater was an Episcopalian while Joseph Liebermann found himself being opposed by the anti-Semites in his own party.  Of course, neither one of those men made it to the White House.  Oath of Office does make an attempt to seriously consider the challenges that would face the first Jewish president and it’s also honest about how anti-Semitism is a prejudice that is often overlooked by even those who brag about their progressive credentials.  As I said, the book has an interesting idea but the plot just keeps getting in the way.

Reacher, S1 Ep1, “Welcome to Margrave” Review by Case Wright (Dir. Thomas Vincent)

Posted on by casewright

Reacher is the greatest show in ten-years! In fairness, I’m a fan of Alan Ritchson (Titans) and Malcolm Goodwin (iZombie). These men have deserved a series for A WHILE!!! It’s great to see talented people have success. It’s how it should be. It reaffirms the power of great art; it can’t be stopped. Thomas Vincent, the director, appears to be on the arthouse side. I was stunned to find out that an arthouse director pulled me into this action packed show by my proverbials. Nick Santora wrote this pilot perfectly. I was pulled deeper into every scene. We need to work on new adjectives to describe how good this show is.

What makes a great Pilot? It has to establish all of the characters, immediate danger/conflict, a mythology, and show not tell. This show had barely any exposition at all. I haven’t seen that done in years. In a time, when lazy writing is the norm, this show tosses all of that aside. Alan was born to play this part. I will get into this deeper later on, but he has the most believable portrayal of a Veteran since Battlestar Galactica. Someone helped Alan act like us and he did a great job of it.

“Welcome to Margrave” opens with Jack Reacher walking toward a diner with no obvious possessions. Reacher is rapidly arrested for a crime he didn’t commit and he’s pulled into this town’s intrigue and bodies are dropping. He walks with some discomfort, which is clear in the pilot until the last scene. Why was this important? Veterans always kind of feel a little naked because we’re permanently out of uniform. We never really get over it. We’re always just a little fish out of water.

Finlay (Malcolm Goodwin) the chief detective has no idea where to begin to solve these murders. The town is just 1700 people in there are two people dead by the end of the pilot. Finlay discerns that a local business accountant Paul Hubble is involved and tries to get him to talk to Reacher by locking them both up at the local prison. However, unknown to Finlay, someone wants Reacher and Paul dead. Let’s take just a moment to offer some respect to the writer and director for opting for the hard road of storytelling. They’ve set all of this conflict up without an exposition fest -that takes talent and discipline. It also leads to the greatest fight scene I’ve ever seen. Not since the Titans “Pilot” did I see a fight scene of this caliber. It topped it.

This show has heart, violence, mystery and intensity. Reacher discovers that the second body is his brother Joe. His physicality changes; he’s more relaxed in both speech and walking. Why? Because now Reacher has a mission: Revenge. Alan Ritchson pulled this transformation off brilliantly.

I have to also discuss Malcolm Goodwin as Finlay. His marriage is failed and now his career is a mess because this town is confronted with two murders in two days. His performance is like a pressure cooker; he’s trying desperately not to explode. I loved it.

I highly recommend this show. It should be picked up immediately!

Novel Review: Scarface by Armitage Trail

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1930, Scarface tells the story of Tony Guarino.  Tony was an 18 year-old hoodlum, working his way through the Chicago rackets.  Unfortunately, for Tony, he started to draw too much attention from the cops and his gangster boss told Tony to stop hanging around so much.  Miffed, Tony decided to join the Army.

Tony served with a valor in World War I.  He was natural leader and had no hesitation when it came to killing people.  He was “a good soldier,” as the novel puts it.  When he’s wounded in battle, he’s left with a facial scar that changes his appearance to the extent that even his own family doesn’t recognize him when he returns to Chicago.  Of course, due to a clerical mistake, they also think that Tony’s dead.  After killing his former mistress and her new lover, Tony somewhat randomly decides to change his name to Tony Camonte and take over the Chicago underworld.

He gets a job working for Johnny Love.  Scarface Tony, as he is called now, works his way up.  Soon, Tony is in charge of the Lovo mob and he even has a girlfriend, a former “gun girl” named Jane.  Unfortunately, Tony also has a lot of enemies.  Captain Flanagan may take Tony’s money but he still wants to put Tony behind bars.  The DA may take Tony’s money but he still wants to put Tony behind bars.  The cops way take Tony’s money but …. well, okay, you get the idea.  Tony can’t trust anyone.  Complicating things is that his older brother is moving his way up in the police force and his younger sister has been hanging out with Tony’s main gunman.  And there’s a new gang boss in town.  His nickname is Schemer.  You know he has to be bad with a nickname like that!

I read Scarface yesterday.  It’s only 181 pages long and it’s a quick read.  It’s also not a particularly well-written book.  The prose is often clunky.  The dialogue is awkward.  Tony really doesn’t have any motivation beyond the fact that he’s a jerk.  We’re continually told that Tony has become one of the most powerful gangsters in the country but we don’t really see any evidence of it.  One of the basic rules is that it’s better to show than to tell and this novel is all about telling instead of showing.  What there is of a plot feels like it was made up on the spot.  For instance, with the exception of an off-hand mention of her in the first chapter, the character of Tony’s sister doesn’t even figure into the story until it is nearly done and, yet, the story’s conclusion pretty much hinges on her existence.  Though not as well-written, Scarface is still a bit like The Epic of Gilgamesh.  Writer Armitage Trail just kept coming up with complications until he finally ran out of tablets and had no choice but to abruptly end things.

That said, the book is notable in that it served as the inspiration for Howard Hawks’s 1932 film, Scarface.  The Hawks film, which only loosely follows the plot of Trail’s book and which wisely abandons some of the less credible plot points, would later be remade by Brian De Palma, with Al Pacino stepping into the role of Tony.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Novel Review: 1988 by Richard D. Lamm and Arnold Grossman

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

From my aunt’s paperback collection, comes 1988!

1988 is a novel about the 1988 Presidential election. It was published in 1986 so, when it first came out, it was meant to be a look at a possible future. But read today, it’s more like a work of alternate history. What if, the book asks, the 1988 election had been disrupted by a third party candidate?

That candidate is Stephen Wendell, who is the governor of Texas. You can tell that this book was written a long time ago because Wendell is described as being a Democratic governor of Texas. There hasn’t been a Democrat elected statewide in Texas for a while and that’s probably not going to change anytime soon. (Sorry, Beto, but it’s true.) Wendell is also a conservative Democrat, which is yet another reminder that we’re dealing with an old book. With neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate exciting the country, Wendell sees an opening for his populist, anti-immigration message.

Jerry Bloom is a former 60s radical who now works as a campaign consultant. At first, he resists Wendell’s attempts to hire him but Bloom finally gives in. Some of it is because Wendell seems to be more reasonable than Bloom originally assumed. A lot of it is because Bloom wants the challenge. As a result of Bloom’s hard-hitting and frequently viscous commercials, Wendell starts to rise up in the polls.

Bloom’s conscience is bothered, however. He used to believe in stuff but now he finds himself as just a political mercenary, turning the country against itself. Plus, Bloom comes across evidence that there’s a secret conspiracy behind Wendell’s campaign, one that could put the future of the Republic at stake!

1988 is an okay political thriller. The plot isn’t particularly surprising and you’ll figure out what’s going on long before Bloom does but, for the most part, it’s a well-written book and Jerry Bloom is an interesting character. I do think that the book overestimates that power of Bloom’s commercials. For the most part, they sound like the type of stuff that The Lincoln Project posted throughout 2020, commercials that would speak to the already converted while turning off the undecided voters. Bloom’s commercials sound like they would be popular with Wendell’s base but they don’t sound like the sort of thing that would make him a potential president.

The book also makes the mistake of including a character named Harrison Chase, who I guess is supposed to be some sort of Edward R. Murrow type. He gives commentaries on the evening news and 1988 devotes page after page to Harrison Chase bitching about the election. Most of the commentaries come across as being pompous and self-important, which might be the most realistic part of the book. But it still doesn’t make them particularly interesting to read. They slow down the action and they also contribute to the book ending on an annoying ambiguous note.

Political junkies will enjoy counting up all of the real-life politicians who are mentioned in the book. (Joe Biden gets a shout-out because he’s been around forever.) Some may also find it interesting that one of the book’s co-authors was governor of Colorado at the time that he wrote the book. One has to wonder how much of that experience contributed to the book’s portrait of the electorate as being easily led and intellectually vapid.

1988 is okay. It goes a little heavy on the “political consultants are bad” angle. It’s not a bad message but it’s hardly a revolutionary. Still, it’s always interesting to read older political books and see how much things have changed and also how much they’ve remained the same.

Novel Review: The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1982, Jeffrey Archer’s The Prodigal Daughter is one of the many paperback novels that I recently inherited from my aunt.  It’s 485 pages long but, as I discovered earlier this week, it’s a quick read.  I got through it in a day and a half.

It tells the story of Floratyna Rosnovski, the daughter of Abel Rosnovski, a Polish immigrant who worked his way up from poverty and now owns a chain of luxury hotels.  Abel is enemies with William Kane, a WASP banker from a wealthy family.  Why are Kane and Abel enemies?  Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that they have ironic names.  Obviously, if your name is Abel, you’re going to mistrust anyone named Kane.  Beyond that, The Prodigal Daughter is a sequel to an earlier Archer novel called Kane and Abel.  I assume that Kane and Abel goes into more detail about the rivalry between the two men but all that really needs to be known, as far as The Prodigal Daughter is concerned, is that they hate each other.

Unfortunately for Abel, Floratyna grows up to fall in love with Richard Kane, the son of William.  Rejected by her father, Floratyna marries Richard and together, they make their own fortune by opening up a chain of stores.  Along the way, Floratyna is approached by a childhood friend named Edward.  Edward, who is obviously in love with Floratyna, recruits her to run for the U.S. House of Representatives.  At first, Floratyna struggles in Washington but soon, she wins the respect of her colleauges and learns to stop being such a leftist.  Eventually, she becomes a Senator and starts to look towards the White House.  But will a personal tragedy keep Floratyna from becoming the first woman to serve as President?

Reading The Prodigal Daughter, I found myself thinking about how Floratyna Kane lived an almost ludicrously charmed life.  Yes, there were some conflicts.  When she was a child, a group of her classmates made fun of her for being Polish.  She dated one jerk before she ended up with Richard.  Her wealthy father hates her husband but he still secretly helps them set up their chain of stores.  She deals with one great tragedy but she recovers from it after seeing a group of homeless veterans and realizing that at least she has a place to live.  Floratyna is a frustratingly passive character.  Her friend Edward finds her a safe congressional district to run in and essentially guides her political career.  Her subsequent success as a politician is largely the result of luck and coincidence.  The book even ends on a note of deus ex machina.  The book’s seems to suggest that the best way for a woman to become president is to passively wait for it to happen.  That’s not particularly empowering.

The Prodigal Daughter was written by Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author who was also a member of Parliament and who has a reputation for being a bit of a shady and disreputable character.  Archer’s prose is simple and rarely sings but, at times, his straight-forward approach to storytelling does pay off.  It makes for a quick read.  If nothing else, the book would seem to indicate that, early in his writing career, Archer understood that people with money are more fun to read about than people without.

Novel Review: The Power Exchange by Alan R. Erwin

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Northern states are hit by a harsh and deadly winter, one that leads to a nation-wide blackout.  The residents of a Buffalo nursing home die while waiting for help that never comes.  Panics sets in across the nation as citizen realize that the federal government can’t solve all of their problems.  The President, a craven politician, puts the blame on the state of Texas, saying that the state has been hoarding its energy resources and not contributing their fair share to keep the rest of the country running.

With the President determined to make Texas into a scapegoat and proposing a series of new regulations designed to take control of the state’s natural resources, the people of Texas rebel.  The newly elected governor fights back, announcing that Texas is prepared to take advantage of the controversial clause in the article of annexation that he says gives the state the right to secede.  China and OPEC are quick to offer aide to the new Republic of Texas.  While the courts and Congress debate whether or not Texas has the right to leave the union, the CIA decides to take action into their own hands….

That may sound like a particularly paranoid take on today’s headlines but it’s actually the plot of a 1979 novel called The Power Exchange.  As a Texan, what can I say?  The idea of seceding from the Union has always been a popular one down here, even if it’s not something that we necessarily take seriously.  After all, we know that the rest of the States don’t really like us and, for the most part, we don’t like them either.  (Not me, though!  I love every state in the Union.)  So, why not secede and close the northern border and basically kick out anyone who complains about the weather or demands to know why we don’t have a Waa Waa on every street corner?  It’s an enjoyable little fantasy, even if it’s probably for the best that it will never happen.  For one thing, if Texas actually did secede, Austin would probably then want to secede from the Lone Star Republic and form the People’s Collective of Travis.  And if Austin seceded, Dallas would definitely follow, just so we could brag about how much better The Free Republic of Dallas was when compared to all of the other new nations on the North American continent.  Things would get messy.

The whole point of The Power Exchange is that it would be very difficult for Texas to secede.  Not only would there by legal issues but there would also be military conflict.  The new nation would have to make some deals with some less than savory characters.  In the book, it may be Governor Jack Green who masterminds the secession but it falls to Lt. Gov. Margaret Coursey to actually pull it off and she quickly learns that there is no easy way to declare your independence.  The book was written by political journalist so, needless to say, the sections about how secession actually works tend to get a bit overly technical.  Fortunately, there are also secret agents, assassins, and one out of nowhere sex scene that is tossed in to keep things from getting too dry.  One thing I’ve learned from reading old paperbacks is that every novel, regardless of the subject matter, had to have at least one sex scene randomly tossed in.  It’s kind of like when a character in a movie suddenly curses just to make sure that the movie gets at least a P-13 rating.

The Power Exchange was among the many paperbacks that I inherited from my aunt.  I read it the week after Christmas.  It was a quick read and fun little “what if?” scenario.