M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans by Richard Hooker and William E. Butterworth

It begins with a kidnapping, and gets steadily more amusing and twisted from there. Hawkeye's wife, Mary Pierce, is about to deliver their fourth child, and is understandably not amused by the idea of her husband assisting during the delivery, so she has a chat with the guys from The Swamp. Trapper, Spearchucker and Duke put together a plot to get Hawkeye out of town for the duration, and Mary first drugs him with a doctored hot cocoa, then they bundle him up in a straightjacket and put him on a plain for New Orleans, where the annual meeting of the TA & VD (Tonsil, Adenoid and Vas Deferens) Society is taking place.

By an amusing set of coincidences, the French Quarter hotel which is hosting the TA & VD convention is also hosting a missionary conference, where Hot Lips Houlihan is one of the medical missionaries, and a Knights of Columbus grand gathering where Archbishop Patrick Mulcahy is representing the Vatican, and the President of the TA & VD Society is...Frank Burns. It gets far more convoluted before it's all through.

Great lines,

"Mr Wachauf had gone to meet his Maker as a result of the energy shortage. He had been standing under an electromagnetic lift supervising the loading of a fifteen-ton six-foot square mass of compacted automobiles into a railroad car at the precise moment the Southeastern North Dakota Power Company had been forced to reduce power to its clients."

Strong drink,

"Do you still make them (martinis) by exposing the gin for thirty seconds to the smell of an old vermouth bottle cork?"

Which reminds me where I got my favorite dry martini recipe, after all these years.

There is an amusing paragraph or two about why the manager of the hotel doesn't like to have religious groups stay there. They brown bag their meals and don't spend any money at the bar, and "The cold truth of the matter...is that the black ink comes from the boozers."

Which reminds me of my conversation with the longtime owner of the Three Rivers Resort. She told me that the original owners were a family of home-schoolers who couldn't stand all the partying people who came there to raft the river, so they sold it to..a Mormon family who also had little tolerance for the hard-drinking party animals who sold it to her and her husband, a pair of retired California school teachers, "We sell them all the beer, wine and cigarettes they want."

But I digress.

Hooker and Butterworth introduce us to the first of the "new" characters in the M*A*S*H universe, "Horsey" de la Cheveaux, a Cajun oil multimillionaire whose family's land grant in Bayou Perdu dates back to the time of Louis XIV, and who was patched back together at the 4077th by Hackeye and Trapper, back in the day.

This book actually begins a pattern which continues through the rest of the series, as various characters, for diverse reasons, end up gathering unwittingly in a series of cities, worldwide. As they say, it's all about the journey, not necessarily the destination.

M*A*S*H Goes to Maine by Richard Hooker

 This is the original sequel to M*A*S*H, written by Richard Hooker, before William E. Butterworth went crazy on the series and created a dozen or so "zany" adventures starring our favorite characters. The story picks up a year or so after Hawkeye has returned to Crabapple Cove and he is working at the VA hospital in Spruce Harbor, Maine for a bunch of fools and other bureaucratic types. He decides he needs to strike out on his own, but first must pass his thoracic surgical boards, so he moves to the big city just long enough to study and master heart and lung operations, then returns and opens up his own hospital and clinic, where he convinces Duke and Trapper and Spearchucker to join him in putting this tiny town on the medical map.

The humorous side of the book deals with broad sketches of the native Maine characters, and giving the medical mal-practitioners their long overdue comeuppance, but there is a more serious side explored when Hooker tells several tales of Hawkeye's surgical adventures, which are probably taken from Hooker's own experiences as a doctor.

Another good, quick read, which may make you crack a smile, let loose a chuckle, or wipe away a tear.

M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker

 Over the years, aside from the core collection of science fiction and fantasy, my library has contained a number of oddball comedic series, such as the Flashman novels, by Fraser, the Doonesbury comic strip collections, and the M*A*S*H collection, by Richard Hooker. I found myself in the mood for some light summer fare and decided to re-read them, which I seem to do about once a decade. Hooker wrote three novels by himself, of which this is the first, and then "co-wrote" a number of others with William E. Butterworth. Of course, after the first novel was published in 1968, there was a famous movie based upon it in 1970, and then a long-running TV series which ran for over a decade, so most of the characters and setting are well known to people of a certain age.

The story begins with the arrival of two new doctors, Hawkeye and Duke,  at the M*A*S*H 4077th, and, as one might not guess from the way things went in the TV series, ends with their departure from Korea and return to the States. Hawkeye is from Maine, while Duke is from Georgia, but they both suffer from a bit of contempt for the regular Army and its officers, aside from the CO of the "double natural", Col. Henry Blake, who is probably the only commander in Korea who could put up with the trouble this duo causes, even before the arrival of their partner in crime, Trapper John.

The saving grace of this trio, if they have one, is their utter devotion to saving the lives of the young men who are sent to their surgical unit with horrendous injuries. They also, at heart, seem to be truly decent human beings, as evidenced by their campaign to raise money to send their Korean houseboy, Ho Jon, to the U.S. so he can attend college, and by some pro bono surgeries for non-war wounds. They drink, gamble and womanize in their spare time, which is not greatly appreciated by their arch enemies, Frank Burns and Hot Lips Houlihan.

You can probably still find copies of this novel at the antiquarian booksellers or possibly even your local library, just for a cool read in the dog days of summer. The book is missing most of the political commentary on war itself that we saw in the last few years of the TV series, which is refreshing.