Beck Book Basher: No Thrill Up His Leg

Wash Post's Steven Levingston reviews "paranoid" Glenn Beck's fiction, which Glenn bills as "faction," kicking off his piece with this and using this photo of Glenn:

The success of Glenn Beck's novel, "The Overton Window," will be measured not by its literary value (none), or its contribution to the thriller genre (small), or the money it rakes in (considerable), but rather by the rebelliousness it incites among anti-government extremists. If the book is found tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots and recited at "tea party" assemblies, then Beck will have achieved his goal.

• The story line, which fictionalizes Beck's well-known paranoia about a secret Big Government plan to crush the liberties of well-meaning citizens, is an extended call to arms, a rallying cry to his angry foot soldiers long stirred by his rantings on Fox News. As the last line of the book warns, "We're everywhere. . . . The fight starts tomorrow."
• Thrillers often are marred by laughable prose, but few have stumbled along with language as silly as this one. When Gardner's son, Noah, meets patriot Molly Ross early in the novel, Beck writes: "Something about this woman defied a traditional chick-at-a-glance inventory." It gets worse: When Noah notices that a few strands of Molly's hair have fallen out of place, Beck tells us, "these liberated chestnut curls framed a handsome face made twice as radiant by the mysteries surely waiting just behind those light green eyes."
• Far more entertaining is the cameo appearance by former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who leers at Molly in an elevator and then gives Noah "a man-to-man stamp of approval indicating their shared good taste in fine feminine company," after which Noah helpfully explains to Molly: Spitzer's "a total horndog."

Levingston provides more commentary along with Beck's other book sales figures.