Neve Gordon reviews Elliott Colla's 'Baghdad Central' in Los Angeles Review of Books

And it's a good one. Here's a short extract:

Detective Khafaji may have been recruited into collaboration, but that does not mean he serves only the Americans. In fact, his story is that of an individual struggling to maintain his selfhood and values even as he loses them. Because it effectively uses the noir genre to explore how the culture of deception is one that necessarily infects everyone, it is difficult to put the book down.

The theme of the review is  "collaboration," and Gordon reviews To Be a Friend Is Fatal : The Fight to Save the Iraqis America Left Behind by Kirk Johnson as well.

Elliott Colla's "Baghdad Central"

I read my friend Elliott Colla's police procedural set in post-Saddam Baghdad in manuscript. I thought it was great. He hunted for publishers, and Bitter Lemon Press decided it was a fine read too.

It has only just been published, but has already received two smoking reviews, one from The Independent, the other, from The Daily Star.

Here's an introduction to what it's all about, which I've sort of cribbed from the review in The Independent. The protagonist, Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji, is a deserter from the Iraqi police who the US forces wrongly identify as a high-ranking official under Saddam. He is tortured at Abu Ghrayb and then cuts a deal with the American occupiers to train new recruits. In return, al-Khafaji will get medical relief for his daughter, suffering from kidney failure, and unable to obtain proper treatment due to UN sanctions imposed on Saddam's Iraq.

The novel even has a youtube trailer, if you will:



And Colla has a personal webpage.

You must read this now. If you like policiers. If you are interested in Iraq. If you like books.

And please buy it from your local bookstore. Not Amazon.

drone life 2: NYPD drones

In December 2012 the NYPD arrested the artist Essam Attia for posting 100 posters around the city suggesting that New York's finest were using drones to control crime. In particular, given the image, it intimates a targeting of the undocumented. (The image of the fleeing family is lifted from a warning sign developed by the California Department of Transportation to warn drivers, on I-5 north of San Diego, that illegal immigrants might be crossing.)

The posters also are riffing on a current iPod add seen around town:

Just a month after Attia was arrested, CBS News reported that the NYPD might be considering using drones in its crimefighting efforts.

A year earlier, anti-war activists in the city, led by a US army vet who had worked with drones during two tours in Iraq, were posting signs saying: “Attention, authorized drone strike zone.”

Stay tuned...