Lost Kin by Steve Anderson

After the events in Liberated Harry Kaspar has been relocated to Munich. As he enters the final weeks of service as an administrator for the military government, his life is good. He resides in a nice house with cushy amenities, has a former WAC girlfriend, and the locals appreciate his efforts to restore some semblance of pre-war normalcy. And then a cop shows up on his doorstep one night informing him that there's been an incident and his brother may be involved. Having not seen nor heard from his brother for several years, Harry's interest is piqued, though for a German-American, he knows this could be a scam, or worse. What follows is an investigation into a murder, black market sales of the spoils of war, and old scores that demand to be settled in blood.

There are elements of noir in this story. Harry's girlfriend has a bit of femme fatale to her which both excites and worries him. Meetings with informants take place in dark alleys and secluded rooms, forcing Harry to always be alert for the double cross. The atmosphere of downtrodden Munich is leaden with cold autumnal rain and early snow. And the American military government is seen through a lens of world weary cynicism.

She knew so many majors, colonels, and generals, all rearguard types who'd never seen combat but rode desks like gladiator chariots except their shields were their puffed-up chests done up with medals of every color, the swords their sharp tongues and stern memos, the feints and thrust their back-room whispers and leaks applied with extreme prejudice. Opponents cowered, colleagues awed, and mistresses swooned.

As with Liberated, Anderson has done the research. The deal that FDR and Churchhill made with Stalin in Yalta would soon turn out to be a Faustian bargain. I don't want to spoil it, but Anderson explores an aspect of that here as a way for the two brothers' paths to cross again.

Lost Kin is a strong addition to the Kaspar Brothers series. The noir elements spice up the intriguing plot, and Anderson's characters are well-developed. I got caught up in their predicament as Anderson entwined their fates with historical events. I'd recommend the series as a whole for WW2 historical fiction fans looking for something different from that time period.

4 stars.

Lost Kin was published by Skyhorse/Yucca Publishing.

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Just to be clear. This book was not submitted to us. I went out and bought it on my own.

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Liberated by Steve Anderson

In the early days of post-war Germany, Captain Harry Kaspar has been assigned by the US military government to oversee recovery efforts in the town of Heimgau. Unfortunately, the post is already occupied by Major Membre. It seems that the office that assigned Membre supersedes the one that picked Kaspar, and obviously the major outranks the captain.

Kaspar and Membre butt heads from the start. Besides smarting from missing out on the position that Kaspar feels should've been his—he trained for it after all—Membre comes across as a self-serving opportunist, more interested in personal gain than helping this Bavarian town start over. Kaspar heads off in a huff to survey the town when he discovers three German men lying in the road, evidentially tortured and murdered. He now has a mystery to solve.

With the aid of Katarina, a former German actress, Kaspar navigates black markets, systemic corruption, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and a disgruntled conquered populace in an effort to solve the murders and right some wrongs, all while trying to avoid getting killed.

Anderson's story was born out of research he did in Munich to get his master's in history. Besides touching on prejudice towards German-Americans stateside, the book calls attention to Allied looting in post-war Europe. While it might be dismissed as stealing from Nazis, it should be noted that the Nazis stole it from innocents. Be sure to check out the afterword to get an idea as to the extent of the theft.

While the story was intriguing and rooting for Harry was easy, Liberated didn't resonate with me quite as much as the previous work—The Losing Role, a story about Harry's brother Max who fought for the Germans—did. I feel that certain characters weren't as developed as I think they could've been. Still, I liked it and plan on reading the next book in the series.

3.5 stars

Liberated was published by Skyhorse/Yucca Publishing.

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Just to be clear. This book was not submitted to us. I went out and bought it on my own.

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Lunch Bucket Paradise by Fred Setterberg

If, like me, you're a Baby Boomer, the suburbs probably played a role in your early life, either as the culmination of your parents' postwar material dreams, or as a green-lawned magical oasis that you could only visit. Cheap suburban real estate was a boon to the working class of the 50's and early 60's, though, as with any new enthusiasm, personal problems did not disappear, and an increasingly unstable economy gave the lie to the concept of easy modern living.

But many books have been written about life in the suburbs (Michael Cunningham's Flesh and Blood comes to mind), and many go unread. Fred Setterberg's sparkling prose and ear for dialog power this autobiographical novel like a vintage T-bird. Setterberg's book has brief, serious (they must be serious; they're in sans-serif) intros to the chapters, which then unleash crackling dialog between the protagonist's autodidact father and his war-hero brother, Win, as well as between the aforementioned older man and the protagonist, called “Little Slick.” The Dad is quite a character: “Too often on Sunday mornings, my mother and I would return home from Mass to find Dad cooking breakfast for the Jehovah's Witnesses, fattening them up for debate.” The Dad and uncle have no illusions and take no prisoners. The Mom is also quite independent, working for political candidates of her own choosing and putting campaign signs up on the lawn over her husband's objections. These are people who know they work for the man and are determined to express their disdain and their heretical ideas when out of the workplace. Of course, some express better than others; another father, a pompous Scoutmaster, gets his comeuppance, but his son pays the price.

The younger generation, playing rock 'n roll and Motown while residing in all-white neighborhoods, of course grow up confused, admiring their parents' resourcefulness but desiring more individuality, living under the shadow of the Vietnam war (which, if you were a teen and time passed slowly, seemed infinitely longer than our longest conflict in Afghanistan seems now), arguing its appropriateness, thinking about going on to college, wondering about their place in what is slowly becoming a service economy. There are dates with girls, hiding extra people in the trunk at drive-in movies, moments of homoeroticism. At the end, our protagonist quits the job his uncle obtained for him (in a ketchup factory) and sets out on a quest for something more. Of course, like the rest of us Boomers, there will be revelations and disappointments, and white-collar work will turn out to be the same as blue-collar toiling for management. The flower beds and barbecue grills will cease to be bourgeois trappings and become for a new generation small avenues for self-expression as the country lurches from one conflict to the next and the economy swings wildly up and down. Though settling down into middle age, the children of the working-class suburbs remember their quarrelsome roots.

For more information, check out the author's website.

Prayer at Rumayla by Charles Sheehan-Miles (A+)

Available at Amazon.com

Profoundly moving, raw, exceptionally well-executed vision into one man's troubled heart as he deals with betrayal and the complexities of life after returning from the 1991 tour in Iraq.

In Prayer at Rumayla you will find an expertly written psychological thriller charting the slowly building resentment and psychological degradation of the protagonist, Private Brown. The story begins with betrayal and disappointment, this theme informing nearly every relationship that the protagonist has: that with his lover, with the Army life in the States, personified by a new and overly harsh sergeant, and finally with his remaining family. Brown is looking for a place of rest, for open arms after being wearied by combat, but finds no safe harbor-everyone, seemingly, is living for themselves, their lives too full to allow Brown even a slightest foothold:

In my room, I get another shock. Everything is gone. My clothes, books, my photo album. Chris, what about my diaries! What the hell did she do with them! I yank open the closet door - empty. The other one down the hall is filled with towels and blankets. I throw it all out on the floor, searching for my things. I don't believe this. Seven years of journals gone - what kind of monster is she? I sink to the floor and put my head in my hands. I wish I could cry.

What happens to such a man—a man who can find no rest in those who should give him peace? Indeed, having been altered by the experiences of war, can Brown ever find peace again? These questions permeate Prayer, with hints of violence presented as dangling causes, bits of dialogue, about killing the sergeant. But the violence is not something that Brown wants, it erupts of its own volition, an ugly monster created by his past, leaving Brown powerless to stop it.

Staring at the road ahead of me, I wonder what will happen. Jesus, I think I really hurt him. I couldn't stop myself; I just got so angry. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't know what I'm going to do.

Unlike in many novels dealing with violence, violence in Prayer is well earned, evolving from the broken hearts and shattered dreams of the characters, being their desperate cry for help, a last stab back at the world that turns a cold shoulder to them. We understand why Brown is the way he is, and we even, if possible, feel a bit of sympathy with him: Brown is lost; having survived the close knit lifestyle of combat soldier, he returns home to find a void. And he's not himself anymore, but a different man, one that he no longer understands.

Will he be able to find a foothold into a new life or will his life spin out of control and he end up crashing into the ground? Just when you think that Prayer is about to offer a cheap resolution, something by-the-numbers, you find that the ending is much more nuanced and thought out, evolving out of the story and the characters in it.

Prayer is easily one of the most impressive books reviewed in this blog. The writing is spectacular, the kind you'd expect to find in a mainstream novel, and this is somewhat disappointing because it demonstrates that mainstream publishing does not always publish books that deserve to be published.