Category: Micro-Reviews

This thriller is set in the early 1990s during the demise of the Soviet Union. Three Soviet spies in Washington find themselves adrift once communism ends. Who’s in charge back home? Do the old rules of spycraft apply? Most important, are old friends and colleagues …

Sometimes when the American drive toward autocracy is getting you down, you just have to give yourself over to Uncle Noam. This book lets you know you’re not alone in your sense of horror. It focuses on America’s role in the world in the early …

A brilliant play about the human cost of the Iraq war. Shortly after Saddam Hussein disappears into hiding, we meet a tiger in the zoo who’s probably about to be eaten by locals. There’s also the ghost of Saddam’s recently killed son Uday, who sadistically …

Donald Nichols is America’s man in Korea after World War II. As an “advisor” to America’s handpicked South Korean president, he builds his own army and operates virtually independent of oversight from either Seoul or Washington. What follows is not quite a Shakespearean tragedy, but …

Born and raised in a North Korean prison camp, Shin Dong-hyuk knows only what decades of indoctrination and back-breaking labor have taught him. His mother is more of a rival than a family member. Other prisoners exist in order to be snitched on. The outside …

A 1987 novel about the Vietnam war. A moonfaced grunt named Cacciato has sized up Vietnam and decided that, all in all, he would rather be in Paris—so he’s going to walk there, all 10,000 klicks. His former squad follows him from the hills of …

The true story of a Uruguayan rugby team that crash-lands in the Andes and resorts to cannibalism to survive. The movie (starring Ethan Hawke) is great entertainment, but it lacks the depth and grit of this epic book. Sixteen people—most of them teenagers—survive the crash. …

This cold-war mystery by a Holocaust memoirist takes us to the repressive streets of Prague in the 1950s. In an era of strict communist repression, daily life is marked by corruption, big-brother scrutiny and near hopelessness. In the authorities’ eyes, every citizen is a suspected …

For readers who have yet to discover the wonder and glory of Carl Hiaasen’s satirical thrillers, this one is a great place to start. The story about malfeasance and murder in the skeevy world of largemouth bass fishing tournaments is both outlandish and true to …

The title suggests a rip-roaring romp through a cityscape of the flesh-eating undead. Indeed, this novel features plenty of action, and the writing is fast and energetic (Malbon clearly loves this topic). The only problem: that’s about all there is—a lot of zombie smiting and …