Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime by Ben BlumMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It was supposedly to make the world aware of Task Force 6-26 war crimes and Camp Nama prisoner abuse in Iraq and similar other U.S. military atrocities that made Luke Elliott Sommer , a former United States Army Ranger, turn bank robber. Or, maybe the money stolen in the robbery was intended to counter the motorcycle gangs controlling crime in the American Pacific Northwest and Canadian British Columbia, primarily the Hells Angels. Or, Sommer is a psychopath or made to behave like one after going into the Rangers as bipolar and coming out with PTSD. Even more confusing and to the point is the author's nephew, Alex Blum, the getaway driver. He successfully poses as one so convinced the bank robbery is an "exercise" that he avoids harsher judicial punishment and is aided in his defense by the book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control and Philip G. Zimbardo himself.
The author dives into the evolving complexities of this defense and gets closer to a truth of peer pressure while finding in his own family mental instability, the horrors of war, and a curious recurrence of higher mathematics even with some of the bank robbers.
[I received an ARC of this book through Goodreads First Reads.]
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