Consequence: A Memoir

Eric Fair's writing is spare. Almost telegraphically so. It adds a layer of harshness to his narrative about how he fell into his role as an interrogator in Iraq. We all know how this story is supposed to go: a perfectly ordinary person gets in over his head, then realizes it, pulls out and writes an apologetic memoir. But while the core beats of the narrative may be the same, Fair refuses to write that book. Instead, he writes the book of how his insecurities overwhelmed him and he avoided the moral high ground at every turn. His writing pulls absolutely no punches from that. The result is that his memoir is haunting and a terrifying tale of how easily a whole country can be pulled into a dark place, especially once for-profit companies join a war.