I really do NOT like war books but war books are pervasive now,  pervasive and innocuous and you can’t tell from the cover or the blurbs.  But many,  many mainstream and detective novels have  huge chunks of war scenes in it.   War has become like the sex of old – gratuitous -lately it seems like  every good novel has to have a war scene or two – backslashes, usually,  explaining deviant behavior or whatever.    Just in my July (!) reading,  I found war-scenes in these books:

(cr) Norwegian by Night by Derek Miller –  Korea, WWII, Vietnam
The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo –  WW2
Light of the World by James Lee Burke – Vietnam
Reef by Romesh Gunesekera – Sri Lankan conflict (minimal)
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – Spanish Civil War – WW1?
The Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Tim Egan –  Little Big Horn
Vanity Fair by WM Thackeray – Crimean War

I read all these books in July, 2013 – (and I read 9 others).   I try to avoid war books but these came up without anyone mentioning that aspect to warn me –  (sheesh!)