Fiery evangelistic General Arnold "Red Dog" Sorkin is commander of the Rockland Air Force Base in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he discovers his base is about to be shut down in a Pentagon cost-cutting, he and a few of his fellow officers who grew up in the South and long for an underground "New Confederacy" decide to blackmail the nation by re-directing their nuclear Minutemen ICBM missiles towards New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. As they attempt to enter the silos and re-direct the missiles, emissaries are sent to Senator Manning, the Speaker of the House, preparing him to step into the Presidency when the President leaves the White House, which he must do under such an imminent and catastrophic threat from the military.Against the leaders of the coup, the Air Force dispatches one of its best, General "Ace" Yeager, who flies to the mutinous base but is captured by the rogue General.But all is not lost. Hot on the trail of the mutineers is Detective Frank Zabrinski of the Philadelphia Police Department.This is a fast paced thriller which William Richert calls a "Cinema Novella" or a screen-play in prose, meant to be read on the page or acted out.If the style is reminiscent of Stanly Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," it is purposeful -- "I want to connect the reader to the warnings from the past by other artists regarding the inherent dangers of each and every nuclear weapon. They all have got to be exterminated, and the cinema can reach almost everybody -- even a 'Cinema Novella' like mine."WHAT GENERALS DO AT NIGHT provides maximum reading entertainment for informative propaganda about the dangers of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.Although the Air Force Generals are villains in the book, they are the heroes, too, as every man and woman in the novel seems to want to do "right" by herself and the country."It is knowing what catastrophic dangers are lurking in the soil with 26,000 active ICBM sites across the U.S. that prompted me to write this novella. And it is the knowledgeable who will most be interested. But it is the ignorant we have to reach, urgently, as soon as possible, on behalf of all of us."
About the Author: Born at the end of WWII and still athletic, William Richert was described as WILD BILL RICHERT - THE NEW HOLLYWOOD MAVERICK in an accolade accorded by the Lincoln Center Film Society in honor of his films WINTER KILLS, JIMMY REARDON, SUCCESS and THE FACE OF DUMAS - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK among others. He also wrote the script for THE HAPPY HOOKER, favorably compared to Jean Genet writing a sitcom by the NY TIMES, and co-wrote and produced LAW AND DISORDER, an early look a citizen-cops taking matters into their own hands, filmed at Trump Village in Queens. William Richert's first novel, 'AREN'T YOU EVEN GONNA KISS ME GOODBYE' was made into the film starring River Phoenix in his first leading role, introducing other young talents like Matthew Perry, and the best seller received glowing reviews, like his monumental political thriller-satire WINTER KILLS, starring Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Eli Wallach, Richard Boone and a host of other luminary talents, which has been called "One of the all time great American movies," by the NY TIMES, on par as number one with CITIZEN KANE said the New Yorker's Brendan Gill. Mr. Richert also produced such acclaimed documentaries as DERBY, which featured Roller Derby stars and a look at the subset of wannabe skaters and working class dreamers in mid-America, and A DANCER'S LIFE, a view from the inside of the mesmerizing students of ballet in training at The American Ballet Theater School, where Rudolph Nureyev and Natalia Makarova still "took class" from the great ballet teacher Madame Pereyaslavski. WHAT GENERALS DO AT NIGHT is darkly comic nuclear entertainment about a mutiny at an ICBM facility aimed at staging a military coup at the White House. Based on true facts about outdated technology and nuclear fallout for a generation that missed DR. STRANGELOVE in the theaters, and who might benefit from the insights into a similarly bent story in a time of threats of nuclear global annihilation, and "Citizen's Militias" are growing across the USA.