Books: The Reluctant Colonel

A worthy coup novel,
set in a place like here

a book review by Eric Jackson

The Reluctant Colonel
by Michael J. Merry
BookSurge, Charlston SC (2008)
618 pp, $23.99 in paper from Amazon.com
ISBN 1419687026

Michael J. Merry is a Brit who has spent decades doing business and economic reporting in Latin America, and who found himself in Panama that October in 1968 when a military cabal ousted Arnulfo Arias and in Caracas that February in 1992 when Hugo Chávez's bid for power fell short. There are many things one knows or suspects but can't write as a journalist, and like many before, Merry has turned to fiction to impart some of the true flavor of what he has seen and heard in his travels.

Here we have the story of a low-level expatriate British telecommunications manager who has some friends in the army of the fictional Latin American republic where he works, and quite by accident finds himself in the middle of a bloody coup d'etat and then press-ganged into a military junta. With the ribald tales of one of the coup plotters interspersed, it's a story of heroism, corruption, genius, betrayal, generosity, venality, international intrigue, sex and violence.

So will this book tell you everything you need to know about Omar Torrijos, Augusto Pinochet, Hugo Chávez or Juan Perón? Of course not. It's a work of fiction. But the characters and acts do have a certain ring of truth to them that only one who knows the history can impart, and this is one of those novels you'll find hard to put down.

Also in this section:

El Valle community art project
Cool Internet sites
Theater: Bent, at Teatro La Quadra
Theater: Come Blow Your Horn, at the Ancon Theater
Books: Deliverer
Festival de Musica in the Casco Viejo
"Some of the women are not all there" exhibition at La Casona
Sparky the Wonder Dog
Poets' corner
Tino Fernández, one of Panama's outstanding bus painters
Books: The Reluctant Colonel
Cool Internet sites
Chiricanos defend their museum
Street Level Jazz and Blues

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