The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

50 NOVEMBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL New Orleans, 1802: Queen Marcella, a mixed-race voodoo priestess, finds herself swept into a hurricane vortex of interna- tional intrigue, personal ambition and religious strife—all triggered by a real book, Ruin of Empires , a post-Enlightenment sur- vey of human history that proposes a com- prehensive solution to the world’s enduring religious conflicts. Its author, Constantin-Francois Volney, was an agoraphobic French revolutionary and member of the first National Assembly. He was also a friend of Thomas Jefferson, who liked Volney’s book so much that he translated it into English, but insisted on com- plete anonymity due to the book’s controversial religious content. This little known but well-documented fact becomes the fulcrum of the plot—the slight tweak to historical events that provokes Napoleon Bonaparte to sail to New Orleans to challenge Jefferson for control of North America. Born in the United States, Thomas Christian Williams has lived in France for more than two decades. He has worked in the political section of Embassy Paris since 2001. For more information about Williams and about Jefferson’s translation of Volney’s book, go to www.LibraryThing.com/ profile/ThomasCWilliams. A Delicate Beauty from Phetburi Bob Bergin, Banana Tree Press, 2012, $3.99, Kindle Edition. The eight short stories in this compila- tion contain more color and intrigue than many novels. Set in exotic Asian and African locales, they portray beauti- ful women, revolutionaries, journalists, art dealers, arms dealers, an assassin or two—even an altar boy. A former U.S. Foreign Service officer, Bob Bergin is a specialist in Southeast Asia, where he spent much of his career. After leaving the Service, he and his wife, Monique, started a business import- ing art and antiques from Southeast Asia and India, and travel there regularly to explore antique markets. Bob also works with historic aviation groups in Asia, and writes magazine articles on aviation and military history. His specialties are the American Vol- unteer Group Flying Tigers and the Office of Strategic Services. In recent years he has spent time in China pursuing interests in U.S. World War II aviation and the Peoples’ Liberation Army Air Force. Bergin’s novels reflect this wide range of interests. Stone Gods, Wooden Elephants (Impact Publications, 2001) is an adventure tale set in the world of Asian antiques, while When Tigers Fly (Impact Publications, 2004) centers on the search for a valuable Flying Tiger airplane. Spies in the Garden (Impact Publications, 2010), a novel of espionage and war, takes place in Burma and China during World War II. A new novel, Phnom Penh Noir , is scheduled for release in November. Presumed Dead Thomas Swinson, Gooseknee Enterprises, 2012, $2.99, Kindle or Nook Edition. Ellsworth Street, a private investigator at a seedy firm, has good reason to hate missing- person cases, especially when they involve young women: he was fired from the Wash- ington, D.C., police force because of one. And he is sure that his new assignment is going to go bad, too: tracking down Chantal Lefleur, the runaway adopted daughter of a Baton Rouge gangster. Street is already in trouble with his girlfriend Claudia, who rightly suspects that Holly Hodges, the young and attractive daughter of Street’s boss, is putting the moves on him. And Chan- tal is not above using her beauty and her brains to team up with Street’s old nemesis, Arnold Jefferson, the pimp who got him fired from the police force. As if all that weren’t enough trouble for one man, further complications—and bodies—rapidly pile up. A speeding SUV nearly runs Street over; Chantal’s gangster father is shot to death in a locked suite at the Ritz Carlton; and a meeting at the National Zoo with Chantal, who is wearing only a fur coat, distracts Street to the point where he nearly becomes the evening meal for a pair of lions. At the novel’s climax, the PI has to rescue Claudia from a drug lab that is much easier to get into than out of. Thomas Swinson retired from the Foreign Service in 1987 after assignments in Saigon, Mexico City, Beirut and Washington, D.C. He also served in the U.S. Army in Europe and as an infantry offi- cer in Korea, and later was a newspaper reporter and editor. He is the author of five previous novels: Switchgrass , Pie Man , Cover Story , The Vegetable Garden and In the National Interest . For more information, visit www.gooseknee.com. This Is Bishkek, Baby Fogarty Wells, CreateSpace, 2012, $9.99, paperback, 346 pages; $1.99,Kindle Edition. Gary Helman, an elderly American sex tourist visiting Bishkek, is kidnapped by a bumbling trio of ethnic Russians. Embassy