The Foreign Service Journal, November 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2022 41 South Africa. In “Heroes,” which reads more like an essay than a poem, she describes Dr. Anthony Fauci as “made up of pure sinew and bone, fit as a well-seasoned fiddle.” Through her poems, the author explores Mt. Kilimanjaro, Victoria Falls, and— closer to home—Pikes Peak and the Colorado River. A Foreign Service spouse, Ruth Obee served in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Tanzania, South Africa, and Washington, D.C., with her husband, FSO Kent Obee, who retired in 1995 after a 31-year career with the U.S. Information Agency. She is a former teacher, edited the monthly publication of the Association of American Foreign Service Women, and has published three other books. Obee currently lives in Colorado Springs. Moral Fibre: A Bomber Pilot’s Story Helena P. Schrader, Cross Seas Press, 2022, $19.95/paperback, e-book available, 436 pages. In this full-length historical novel, author Helena Schrader combines fine storytelling with an in-depth knowl- edge of Germany in World War II. The mission that Flying Officer Kit Moran (a bomber pilot) and his crew—all in their early 20s—undertake against Adolf Hitler gives them a 50 percent chance of survival. Moran, who earlier as a flight engi- neer had been cited LMF (Lacking in Moral Fibre) for refusing to fly after a raid on Berlin that killed his best friend and skipper, is in love with his dead friend’s fiancée. With their fears, courage, and hopes for the future, the characters are all well drawn, and the battle scenes are accurately detailed. The result is a highly engaging work that is, as the author intended, a tribute to those who fought for freedom. Helena P. Schrader, a career FSO who served primarily in Africa and Europe, earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Hamburg with a dissertation about a leading member of the German Resistance to Hitler. She retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2018 and now writes full-time from an island in Greece. Also recently published are a nonfiction book, The Holy Land in the Era of the Crusades: Kingdoms at the Crossroads of Civilizations, 1100-1300 (2022), and Grounded Eagles (2021), an anthology of three novellas set during World War II. The Hong Kong Gambit: A Plot to Buy Thailand Phillip Church, Fulton Books, 2022, $20/paperback, e-book available, 354 pages. In this thriller from retired Foreign Service Officer Phillip Church, three friends, all retired government work- ers, plan a relaxing fishing trip in Thailand. But when hijackers attempt to take control of their flight to Bang- kok, the trip takes a turn into chaos. Soon the friends—a retired CIA officer, a former naval fighter pilot, and a retired commercial attaché—find themselves in the middle of a plot by Chinese organized crime members to bring downThailand’s economy. The story, set around the time when the British transferred administration of Hong Kong to mainland China, explores the ties between international finance, economic growth, and human trafficking. The author says his intent was to “place the reader in the middle of contemporary concerns about how global economic growth has too often benefited the few at the expense of the many.” To weave this dramatic tale of illicit commerce and sex trafficking, Church has drawn on his experiences designing technical assistance programs in South and East Asia with the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1970 to 1995. He resides in Northern Virginia. The Red Knife: A Novel H.K. Deeb, independently published, 2022, $10.99/paperback, e-book available, 227 pages. In his fourth novel, which is listed on Amazon under “occult horror,” author H.K. Deeb tells the story of Thomas and Angelo, former classmates who were once in love with the same woman. Ten years before the novel begins, the woman, Ella Kessel, dies under mysterious circumstances. After her death, the two men go their own ways until Angelo, a lawyer who suffers frommental health issues, encounters the supposedly dead woman while on a business trip to Italy. She tells Angelo to pass a message about a red knife to Thomas; and Angelo, confused by the meaning at the heart of the message, consults with a “biographer of the vanished.”