An electrifying, magnificently and hilariously dark novel about an army and subculture wallowing in peacetime, Buffalo Soldiers catches the martial spin of history much as Catch-22 and Dog Soldiers did in their day. Robert O'Connor's fighting men are soldiers idled by the new world order. Vietnam is long ago and far away, or so it would seem. But for "the fighting 57th," an American battalion stationed near Mannheim in the Federal Republic of Germany, peace is merely the "continuation of war by other means."Base life is marked by indolence and fear, and slacking is the most highly prized art form. The only gestures toward the notion of war are infrequent target practice, forced marches, and mock battles via laser tag. Everyone makes the most of his spot in the vast bureaucracy, working jobs little different from the ones found back home. Lest they present a stray target for a beating by roving packs of the opposite race, soldiers find safety in numbers or stay indoors. For the simple GI every day is a struggle, and the night more so, though for most of them the rituals of the barroom, the cathouse and American TV around the clock provide sufficient release.But Specialist Ray Elwood - clerk to the battalion commander, master of inventive paperwork - traverses this no-man's-land with a very specific mission: dealing heroin to the troops. What Elwood desires is control, even transcendence, and he musters his highly evolved instinct for survival against enemies from all quarters. His dope business - a small military operation in itself, with an elaborate system of processing, concealment and security - has be come dangerously commingled with his attraction to a young woman, and before you know it, all sorts of nasty events begin to accelerate wildly around him. Among them, unbeknownst to Elwood, is an investigation from somewhere high up and focused wholly on him.Here is the Army (and a society) in the act of consuming itself with race, with rank, with the fascination of depravity the power and glory always not enough or else too much. And at the center of it all, a strangely decent man destroyed by the system he thought would save him. Violent, comic, flat-out mesmerizing, Buffalo Soldiers is the war novel our times deserve - and a bravura debut. Read Less