Friday's Forgotten Book: Lightning On The Sun

Detroit's own Patti Abbott recently started Friday's Forgotten Book, a boon to readers -- and content-stumped bloggers -- everywhere.

Thanks, Patti.


The aptly-titled, first-and-last novel Lightning On The Sun was published less than ten years ago, got some attention due more to author Robert Bingham’s fatal heroin overdose months earlier than to the novel’s considerable merit, and faded from view. I think it a fine, overlooked novel.

Bingham drew on his literary idols Graham Greene and Robert Stone, and on his time as a journalist in Cambodia (and, yes, as a heroin user), for this tale of nihilistic young Americans making an ill-conceived bid to cut themselves in on the drug trade.

The story is a bit loose to really work as a thriller, but it is thrilling. The live-wire narrative voice and the sense of doom are what stay with you: it’s like listening to that friend who’s sharper than you’ll ever be but will never profit from it, because all that his intellect can do is find the bitter joke, and the corruption, in everything.