Apricot Marmalade and the Edmondson Transmittal by Lon Orey

Orey’s novel operates in an honorable tradition — the satirical exposé of institutional absurdity as lived experience rather than political commentary. Apricot Marmalade draws on Orey’s actual service in Military Intelligence in Vietnam-era Thailand, and that autobiographical grounding distinguishes it from academic exercises in the genre.

The cast — Colonel Morgan, Major Harris with his nuclear fixations, Trooper Cooper the hypochondriac, Irv Bonner snake-phobic in a snake-dense country — are individually well-realized as comic types with genuine satirical function. Each represents a specific failure mode of the intelligence bureaucracy.

The Thailand setting is the novel’s greatest asset. Orey knows the terrain. A worthwhile contribution to the literature of Vietnam-era satire.

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