BuzzFlash Reviews

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Publisher's Weekly gave "Salvation Boulevard" a starred review: Best known for American Hero (1994), the jaunty political novel that became the film Wag the Dog, Beinhart offers something less jaunty but definitely more ambitious in this splendid religious legal thriller. When Ahmad Nazami, a Muslim scholarship student at the University of the Southwest, confesses under duress to the murder of Nathaniel MacLeod, an atheist philosophy professor, PI Carl Van Wagener, a born-again Christian, agrees to help Manny Goldfarb, a celebrated Jewish defense lawyer, prove Nazami's innocence. Van Wagener, a member of charismatic pastor Paul Plowright's Cathedral of the Third Millennium, is soon on the trail of a missing manuscript MacLeod wrote disproving God's existence. In a beautifully understated author's note, Beinhart lays out the factual basis for his provocative morality tale and invites readers to visit his Web site, which includes a forum for an ongoing dialogue about religion, irreligion, faith, belief, and their intersections with politics, war, money, life, and death.

And it has five stars on Amazon.com, released in September.

Larry Beinhart writes from time to time for BuzzFlash. He's a brilliant writer, who penned the book that became "Wag the Dog." His book and the film are what we would recommend to anyone who wants to understand modern American narrative/performance/theatrical politics.

Beinhart has written many other books and commentaries.

In "Salvation Boulevard," he returns to his first love, mysteries. (He won the coveted "Edgar Award" for mysteries with the first book he wrote.) Only this is a mystery that explores the clash of religious beliefs in America and how they impact a murder mystery. Amazingly, Beinhart doesn't lose his Raymond Chandler tone as he needles the thread through some difficult terrain.

Vincent Bugliosi
"A gripping, page-turning tale that takes one through bad lawyers and good ones, treachery and faith, pornography and preaching, torture and Homeland Security. Salvation Boulevard is a great and memorable read."

Robert K. Tanenbaum
"Salvation Boulevard is dramatic and highly provocative. Larry Beinhart expertly crafts a tempestuous philosophical personal drama that will unquestionably motivate intense discussion, debate and critical thinking. Read Salvation Boulevard and you will be consumed in a thought provoking whirlwind. It's quite a significant read."

Ambassador Joseph Wilson
�In Orwellian times, fiction is often the only way to get the truth out. We are approaching such times in the United States, and Larry Beinhart masterfully alerts us to what depths our government has sunk. Salvation Boulevard is a quick paced and heart wrenching call to arms against the excesses our government has foisted upon �we the people.�

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