[3] The Sexual Occupation of Japan (1999) was lauded by English professor and novelist Les Standiford as "rivaling Michael Crichton in topicality, le Carre in authority, and Martin Cruz Smith in emotional depth".
His father Ernest quit law school to become an actor, and a playwright, and met his future wife Marion, a dancer, while performing in the 1927 production of the Broadway musical Good News.
Setlowe's lowest grades were English and languages, but his math and science won him a scholarship to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York to study engineering.
[7] This Doomsday scenario is drawn out in vivid counterpoint to the human dimensions, which portrays the social ferment of marital tedium, love and sexual profligacy in military life.
[8] Setlowe retrospectively incorporates his personal experiences into his narrative, but The Brink also reflects some of the pervasive social discontent of the post-Vietnam War period during which the book was written.
The premise for The Brink is contextualized in well-documented historical events—the strident posturing of world leaders such as Nikita Khrushchev, sensational headlines taken directly from the ominous intonations of President Eisenhower and General Dulles, and the clinical calculus of now-declassified reports on the crisis.
and CIA at the direction of President Eisenhower developed possible limited war contingencies in defense of the Offshore [Taiwanese] Islands, but quickly arrived at a consensus assessment: "…the Joint Chiefs, in particular Air Force General Nathan Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, felt that the use of atomic weapons was inevitable and the planning proceeded on that assumption" and "the study proceeded on the assumption that a Chinese Communist move against the Offshore Islands would involve aerial as well as artillery interdiction followed by American atomic attacks on mainland airfields".
reviewed Caroline Banks in The Washington Post, "Richard Setlowe has made them—in part by juxtaposing them to the elegant 'pillared mansions of the senior officers along Walnut Avenue'—seem as sinister as the House of Usher.
They are 'a great desolate armada—aircraft carriers, battle cruisers, assault transports, destroyers and submarines—all packed stem to stern in tight rows along the length of a narrow bleak pier.'
Published in 1991, this tale of terror set in Southeast Asia presaged a post-9/11 world in which piracy, ancient ethnic conflicts and ideological zealotry threaten to undermine the hegemony of the superpowers, despite the advantages of their military and technological superiority.
J. C. Pollock, author of Goering's List, observed presciently, "The Black Sea ushers in [the] new era [for the adventure novel] with a masterfully told tale so real it could be true.
[18] The Islamic fundamentalism and piracy portrayed in Setlowe's thriller not only reflects the zeitgeist of its time but also foresees with uncanny accuracy events that would take center stage in world affairs a decade later.
[19] The menace of past lives colliding with the present explored in The Haunting of Suzanna Blackwell is a theme Setlowe revisits in his fifth novel, The Sexual Occupation of Japan (1999).
[20] Setlowe's novel, however, focuses on interwoven histories—a main character whose personal experiences and memories pit him against contemporary adversaries seething over bitter grievances fomented in wartime Japan.
The book begins with an act of literal reciprocity for the metaphorical emasculation of Japanese men bent on revenge for the humiliations suffered at the hands of American occupiers.
The gruesome "night letter" nailed on Saxon's hotel room door recalls the true story of geisha Sada Abe, well known in Japan for having carried her lover's severed genitalia in her handbag after killing him by erotic asphyxiation.
Ronnie Terpening, in a starred review for Library Journal, encapsulated The Sexual Occupation of Japan: "Setlowe tells an intelligent and engrossing story of love and war, one crafted with exquisite skill, richly detailed, insightful in its implications….