The storming of The Capitol Building in Washington DC, in January last year, has been described as a failed coup. Some commentators may have claimed it was the closest America has come to a second revolution, but in truth, the US has been divided for years by race, economics, religion and geography, etc, etc. This has been fertile ground for the various militia’s, a disparate group of mostly ill-educated and brain-washed “rednecks”, who’ve been gathering in the backwaters of America for years, and have been aided in recent times by the rise of social media. This has enabled them to more easily promote their off the wall far-right ideologies, to a wider and more gullible audience. Most of these groups believe that the Republican and Democratic parties are corrupt, if any of these bandits got anywhere near the Oval Office and decision-making power, you’d be foolish to think, that that they’d be all things too all men. They too would act like any dictator who has swept to power around the globe in the past, they’d line their own pockets first and foremost. This months first book review is set in the world of the militia’s, it’s the Great American Boogaloo by Paul Flower and published by Farrago Books ( www.farragobooks.com ) on the 31^st March.

From his woodland bunker, Bo ‘Big Bruddah’ Watt’s has assembled an army of gun-totting militia men. When unfounded rum ours start circulating that the Liberal female President of The United States is going to tackle climate change by banning beef, snatching the great American hamburger from the mouths of patriots, he is determined to stop the president with the help of octogenarian Wilbur Tuttle and his private military enterprise, Silver Eagle Security, The plan is to kidnap the president’s daughter and launch a coup in tampa florida and then install a puppet president, then Big Bruddah and Tuttle hope to ignite the log-awaited insurrection militia members call the “Boogaloo”, what could possibly go wrong?

Yes, what could possibly go wrong? Well for me, I couldn’t get into this book. Maybe its because I think these guys are charlatans of the highest order and trying to make them look funnier and even sillier then they already are is unecessary as they don’t need any help. The book is two hundred and ninety-four pages in length, I got to fifty-six, a little over a fifth of the way in.  But I found the characters uninteresting and the whole story very unfunny. This is only my opinion, so please don’t let me take anything away from Flowers writing or the book overall. One man’s unfunny book is another mans “rollicking riot of insanity….”

I always tell people if you’re not feeling the love for a book, don’t prolong the agony, life’s too short… Also I have a rule, as I’ve stated before, if it hasn’t got you by fifty pages in, then it ain’t going to.

It could be just me, maybe if I comeback to it in a couple of months I might find it a likeable and humorous read, at this present time, though, unfortunately not.

This is American author Paul Flower’s ( @flowerPaul ) third book his others are The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery (2013) and The Great American Cheese War (2019). He has been writing professionally for over forty years, much of his career was spent in advertising and marketing. He’s also worked in broadcasting for a short time too. His writing has appeared in national and regional magazines. He currently lives in Michigan.

So please don‘t take my word for it, I would advise you to go out order a copy and then see if either you agree or think I’m the one who is literally off their rocker.

Reviewed by Adrian Murphy

This book review is part of a Random Things Blog Tour, to see what the other reviewers thought, visit their blogs listed below. Then, if you get a copy, comeback and tell us what you thought, we’d really appreciate the feedback.