With this one I've finally gotten my grubby paws on the complete (published in book format and more or less fictional) works of Larry Beinhart. And I loved it so much (as usual) that now I'm heartbroken. There was no new book from Beinhart since mid-90s, and I miss them sorely. Re-reading is fun, in this case enormous fun, but I WANT MORE!
...OK, ad rem. Great book. Mother-in-law scenes galore, plus spooks, musclemen, Czech mafiosi and Japanese businessmen with all the manners of hungry sharks. And Tony Casella, who's so much one of a kind that you'd wish you were like him, even with the stuff he has to face in his life.
Buy it. Then go buy Beinhart's other novels. And weep like me, after you're done laughing.

I read this book several years ago, and it is a crime in itself that the book is out of print. Tony Cassella is an engaging character, the plot is gripping AND it has a nifty "twist" such as you also find in American Hero. I certainly wish we were going to get more of this clever and believable detective, but I do understand that Mr. Beinhart has a living to make.

I have read all (three) of Mr. Beinhart's Tony Cassella books and they are each fabulous. I waited and waited for him to write something else, and then I interpolated (from American Hero) that he was unable to support himself by writing the Tony Cassella series. This is a crime in itself. I would really like Mr. Beinhart to write more of this series. If you are reading this, Mr. Beinhart, please know that I love reading what you write and recommended your books to LOTS of people. I kept pestering the Tattered Cover here in Denver to get with it and stock you. The real point of this review is to tell you how great I think your books are. Anyway, I did MY best to make you a national sensation. Sorry it didn't work better.

The things I love about this book are that it's clever, formally interesting, and fun to read, and that it is irreverent. It doesn't tell you to scrutinize the market and write only the sort of book that is viable and popular. It identifies the structures and details that make for pleasurable reading, and it encourages you to be innovative and unique. It sets you in the direction of thinking about the specific choices you've made for your book and how you can make them more compelling. However, this book should be called How to Write a Crime Novel, since the author is not concerned with traditional cozy mysteries--a huge portion of the mystery market, I would imagine--and admits that he doesn't understand their appeal. I would guess that if you are interested in hard-boiled crime fiction, you could get a whole education about its best and brightest here, since Beinhart's examples and analysis mine hard-boiled fiction for some amazing and entertaining material. He also offers many lists of exemplary hard-boiled writers and books. But the things the author says about cozies (and quotes others as saying about them) are unjustifiably paltry and cliched. As someone who is trying to write a cozy mystery series, I found this book extremely helpful, but not ideal.

... Even though this book is specifically for writing mysteries,

it is by far the best of all the writing books I have.

Besides being a great writer, which makes this book a quick and enjoyable read, Larry gives practicle advice, inspiration, examples, and walks you through each step of writing a mystery.

I've put aside all other writing books and I'm reading this one for the second time.

It is well worth the money.

This is a great book for both the beginner and the experience writer. It walks you through the process without holding your hand. Outlining the process from start to finish it can help the self-taught refresh their memories and to double check themsleves while providing a start to finish map for the new author to follow. Even for those who don't need the information contained within its covers, this is a good read that makes you think about the subject.

Larry Beinhart's AMERICAN HERO is really two novels; a trenchant political satire and a by-the-numbers PI story. The story of Joe Broz and his Hollywood paramour was stricken with the same situations, relationships, developements and cliches (even a Kung Fu showdown, fer cryin' out loud) as a zillion other Private Detective novels. Nuff said. The other part of AMERICAN HERO, the shimmering Verasalles palace of the the book, is the tale of Lee Atwater's fevered public relations pitch, it's acceptance by George Herbert Walker Bush, and it's conception in the hands of Hollywood heavyhitter John Lincoln Beagle. In these chapters, Beinhart shines: exposing the stunning gullibility, mindless jingoism and political apathy of the American people. One wonders why he stopped short of describing the war itself, but since it is such a recent memory, the readers themselves can think back with embarrassment at how heartily we embraced that highly dubious military foray, with yellow ribbons, ticker tape parades, and a nintey percent approval rating for ole George Herbert Walker. Beinhart lets the chill run down our spines as we close the book and realize for ourselves that Atwater was right. We're a nation of suckers, tacitly complicent in our own duping. (LOVED THE FOOTNOTES!)

I love a good conspiracy theory and this is one of the best. This was a very interesting novel. The thought had never crossed my mind that the Persian Gulf War was a false war. This opened my mind to the realization that a fake war could be a reality. Although the book begins with the disclaimer,
This is a work of fiction. Many public figures appear in the text. Their speech and actions as depicted here are figments of the author's imagination except where supported by the public record.
, it appeared that the Larry Beinhart knew what he was talking about, that or he has a really great imagination. I really liked the book because it was about the side of politics that no one ever really sees. The dirty, no holds bar, the ends justify the means, kind of stuff. A life of politics takes a lot of strength and courage. The two timelines that Beinhart used made the story flow better and gave a more "common person" side to it. Overall, I felt it was a great book and I'm off to find the movie version.

There's something about _American Hero_ that pulls at the edges of the reader's mind: you will not turn a page without pausing to think, "Could this really happen? DID this really happen?" I'm a veteran of the Gulf War. I was there. I KNOW what I saw.

And yet...

_American Hero_ is putatively the novel on which the hit film "Wag the Dog" is based. A president intent on reelection, a film producer confronted with the biggest project ever, a war made for the screen. But however much Beinhart's opus depends on the world of film, that paradigm doesn't have enough dimension to capture the essence of _American Hero_ in return. You NEED to read this.

The book is complex, heavily footnoted, and written in such a manner as to prove itself fact or fiction, whichever you prefer to believe. Chances are, you won't KNOW what to believe by time you read the final summation.

Beinhart, whose other work (_You Get What You Pay For_, _Foreign Exchange_ and _No One Rides For Free_, as well as the non-fiction _How to Write a Mystery_) hasn't achieved the popularity it deserves, has delivered a masterpiece.