Inside The Circle is a new novel by AAA Lifetime member, Paul Berge. It’s 1937. The Depression lingers as “Dust Bowl” and “SPAM” enter the American vocabulary. War begins in Spain. Amelia Earhart vanishes over the Pacific, and the King of England—unable to cope with Amelia’s loss—abandons his throne to marry the woman he pretends to love.
More importantly, Prohibition is over, leaving thousands unemployed: Gangsters, G-men and barnstormers who’d once made a respectable living in Berge’s previous novel, Bootleg Skies, must now turn to less interesting work. For pilots, this means airline and corporate jobs, except for one enterprising commercial pilot, Kate Strauss, who can’t qualify for the airlines because No Women Allowed in the cockpit. Kate, along with a devoted circle of friend and lovers, keeps a small Midwest flight operation aloft by the numbers…the numbers racket, that is.
Money laundering, Chicago mobsters, biplanes, newsreel footage, running boards on a blood red Ford V8, ten-cent gas and nickel cigars, plus a few Hollywood floozies just to give it class—it’s all Inside The Circle.
© 2008, Ahquabi House Publishing, LLC; Trade Paperback; 382 pages; $19.95; available for purchase online, a portion of profits go to the APM Endowment. Rated PG-13 for some biplane violence and un-PC language
