The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2012 51 Security Officer Sheamus Rissler manages to locate and rescue Helman, but his kidnap- pers get away. The next day, Helman’s erratic behavior gets him booted off a flight home and into Bishkek’s mental hospital, where he becomes convinced that Sheamus is part of a CIA/KGB plot to silence him once and for all. Meanwhile Senator Akumbayev, a Kyrgyz mafia kingpin, is willing to do whatever it takes to score the lucrative national cell-phone contract. Only President Hakiev and his sociopath nephew stand in the way—at least until upcoming elections, with a few assassinations thrown in, put Akumbayev in control of the Senate. To grease the skids, the senator portrays Helman’s psychotic rants against President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the war on terror as official U.S. policy, generating an outcry from the Kyrgyz electorate and a blistering demarche from the embassy. As Kyrgyzstan descends into political chaos, the scene shifts to Manas Air Base in Bishkek. There, newlywed Nazgul Yanonova, who is to accompany her young Marine husband’s casket to the U.S., fails to show. Sheamus is asked to investigate her disap- pearance, a mission that ultimately takes him to a remote village. Some of his questions are answered there, but new ones arise. Fogarty Wells has been with the State Department for more than 10 years, with postings to Kyrgyzstan, Belize and Suriname. Postgraduate writing classes led to the completion of two screen- plays, one of which received honorable mention in the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting competition. More Coffee Break Mysteries: The Sherlock Holmes Edition William S. Shepard, Amazon Digital Services, 2012, $2.99, Kindle Edition. Just as he did in the first volume in this series, More Coffee Break Mysteries: The Sherlock Holmes Edition (Uncle Seth Cutler Press, 2010), William S. Shepard has penned 20 new short mysteries for intrepid, but time-pressed, readers to solve. (Just in case you’re stumped, the solutions appear immediately following each story.) As a bonus, the first five of these stories feature (with permis- sion of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate) Sherlock Holmes, Doc- tor John Watson, Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. The next six include two classic British settings (“Mystery on the Moor” and “The Haunted Portrait”) and a contemporary