I confess that military satire is not my usual domain, but Apricot Marmalade proved irresistible in the manner of all genuinely good comedy — it knows its subject with precise intimacy, which transforms the particular into the universal.
Lon Orey’s Vietnam-era Bangkok is rendered with the kind of sensory specificity I associate with the finest historical fiction, and his gallery of intelligence officers — each magnificently unsuited to the demands of their profession — recalls the great tradition of comic ensemble novels from Smollett forward.
The underlying point — that institutions designed for serious purpose are reliably occupied by seriously unsuitable people — is as pertinent today as it was in 1968. A surprisingly delightful reading experience.
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