OTHER REVIEWS
“Martyn Burke’s “Ivory Joe” is the kind of book that reminds you –in case you needed reminding –that reading can be tremendous fun. Burke has created a vast, unruly, quintessentially American landscape here…Prepare to get carried away… Burke is a storyteller of lavish generosity….”
— The Washington Post
IVORY JOE
“Mr. Burke weaves a deft plot involving the theft of one of Ivory Joe’s songs, “Ghost Lover.”…the author manages to invoke the quiet determination and talent of a black musician at a turning point in popular music’s history. Ivory Joe” is a real pleasure…
— New York Times
IVORY JOE
The wildly colorful characters who inhabit Martyn Burke’s novel, rushing pell-mell from the back rooms of mid-1950’s Harlem to the deepest redneck South, burst from its pages in an explosion of energy…..”Ivory Joe” is wonderfully satisfying, leaving the reader grinning contentedly long after book’s end.
— San Francisco Chronicle
IVORY JOE
This hilarious and suspenseful novel traces the struggle for survival throughout the Cold War of a Soviet diplomat/spy name Dimitri, stationed in the U.S. a country he secretly adores…The most bizarre element in this constantly surprising tale has to do with Dimitri’s secret stock-market venture…. Filled with scenes of riotously funny panic, the book is an inspired comic performance…
— Publisher’s Weekly
THE COMMISAR’S REPORT
Martyn Burke’s new novel is consistently funny, surprising and inventive with no small amount of tension….
…Beneath the humor are some astute observations about attitudes...in light of chilly US-Soviet relations
— LA Times
THE COMMISAR’S REPORT
“Martyn Burke’s novel is a wonder of intense, cinematic storytelling. It is also a novel that works well on many different levels: as comedy, romance, period piece, thriller, switching fluidly from one to the other…But The Commissar’s Report is not really about Dimitri’s career triumphs diverting as they are, or about his abiding love affair with Enemy Number One. It is really about revenge…”
— The Wall Street Journal
THE COMMISSAR’S REPORT
The “Catch-22” of Southeast Asia.
— Pubisher’s Weekly
LAUGHING WAR
LAUGHING WAR
One of the best fictional Vietnam scenes yet published.
— The Washington Post
“Instead of describing combat directly, Burke focuses on the sideshow…Lenny Bruce once said that humor is tragedy plus time but times runs out on Barney. In one of the best fictional Vietnam scenes yet published, he faces the convergence of his jokes and the real world.”