War Babies: a Novel

Book excerpt: Colonel, Brian Collins, U.S. Army, Federal Marshal Tim Fallon and Dr.Michael Shea—all born in 1946 and representative members of the War Baby Generation—are introduced in the opening chapters of the novel, the year all three men turn fifty. The murder of an Army officer and her New York City Police Detective lover, bring Brian, his two childhood friends, and those important to, their past and present lives, together again, in a literary thriller played out in places like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, New York City, New Jersey and Honduras. Behind the media accounts of the war against crime by municipalities where police commanders publically account (Comstat) for the rise and fall of crime in their precincts, and the precision and gadgetry of military smart bombs, behind the strategies and tactics of the Department of Defense, there are people, up and down the chain of command, good and bad, members of paramilitary and military organizations, the rank and file with their own personal drives, ambitions, needs, dark and light sides. War Babies is a story about three of them, drawn together by a murder which connects all three and the people important to them. Metaphorically, War Babies is not without a necessary degree of infant mortality. Death, destruction, complication and intrigue are character driven and serve to intensify and realistically portray the story lives of the characters. War Babies’ is about evolved characters coming to terms with themselves, their partners and a world that the baby boomer generation largely created themselves. Having spent twenty-six years, in one part of my life—in places like Europe, Central America and the United States—both active and reserve in the Army, where I began as a Private and retired as a Major—and written, among other things, Of Cops and Priests and Fact and Fiction, I think War Babies mirrors the reality of police procedure, military protocol and every day characters.