Blackwater: the novel.

• Author: Mangu-Ward, Katherine
• Position: Briefly Noted - Expendable Assets - Brief article - Book review

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When a onetime senior vice president and general counsel of the military contractor formerly known as Blackwater writes the kind of novel you can't describe without the phrase thinly veiled, it's probably going to be awful. When that novel is self-published and has a rough-and-ready wish-fulfilling anti-hero (named Gault!) who gets the girl, the presumption of awfulness only grows.

So maybe it's just the lowered expectations talking, but Drew Howell's Expendable Assets (CreateSpace) is a pleasant surprise. It isn't War and Peace--or On War, for that matter. And the main...