School is back in session, and for my first book report I'd like to discuss Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson, a book definitely too raunchy for most schoolrooms.

You will not have heard of Craig Ferguson, unless you are one of the millions of Americans who have trouble sleeping, or actually ENJOY watching late night comedy-talk shows, programs such as The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which is seen weeknights on CBS.

And if, like us, you once in a while watch Ferguson's show, and we do, in the morning, with tea and coffee and biscuits, because we think he's funny, and we need an antidote to the daily news, and we are able to time-shift selected late night programs into better time slots using our nifty Digital Video Recorder.

If you watch The Late Late Show, you will be surprised that the Scottish-sounding comic holding forth on a cheesy set in Los Angeles also is the author of Between the Bridge and the River, which turns out to be a first-rate satirical novel about seeking truth and salvation in modern America.

You'd think that with such an accomplished book to his credit the author would be planning to write something else. I searched everywhere for additional books by Craig Ferguson, and finally arrived at The Loan Book of the Stationers' Company: With a List of Transactions 1592-1692 and Pica Roman Type in Elizabethan England.

Probably not the same guy. A stunning coincidence nevertheless.

I enjoyed Ferguson's novel for many reasons, none of which was the main plot, which is a bit silly and overblown, in the way Carl Hiaasen can be silly and overblown and also funny and satirical.

Ferguson steps away from his characters from time to time in order to blast the reader with startling asides. These can be downright illuminating, like this on the difference between Protestants and Catholics:

"The divisions between the two faiths are small and nitpicky at best. Things like: 'Take this, eat, this is the body of Christ' vs. 'Take this, eat, this REPRESENTS the body of Christ.' (Millions all over Europe had died for that one.)"

Ferguson is a Scot who has adopted America as his permanent home. His perspective could be compared to de Tocqueville -- bemused, amused, and still an outsider. Ferguson's scathing point of view is apparent throughout the novel, explicitly so at times.

He writes, "White Americans have a very unusual sense of history. They make it up as they go along, constantly revising to suit their tastes in a manner that would make Stalin blush. Very few of them saw any irony in the fact that during a recent nasty Balkans conflict, when Uncle Sam intervened to stop the Serbs from ethnically cleansing the Bosnians, the military action was performed using Apache helicopter gunships. Helicopters named after a people that had been ethnically cleansed in the United States less than one hundred years previously. Sixteen-lane highways across the sacred burial grounds. Yee-hah."

The novel can be heavy-handed, but it's always fun: "She was rereading a book an American acquaintance had given her years ago, 'Men Are Asteroids, Women are Meteorites,' by Some Idiot, when she first made eye contact with George."

There actually is a story here, and characters, and adventures, and humor and pathos and a big, wind-up ending, and while it's maybe not the most smoothly written book, it's always a rollicking good adventure, and definitely worth your time.

Mystery author Lawrence Block is quoted on the cover, "Buy this book. Read it. You'll thank me."

I did that, and I'd thank Mr Block for the recommendation if only I knew how to reach him.

Aired Sunday September 2, 2007 at 10:55 am and Wednesday September 5, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Between the Bridge and the River by Craig Ferguson. Chronicle Books paperback $13.95. ISBN 0811858197.

Ferguson writes, "This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therein and most of it did not happen, but it's all true. In that sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical."

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