Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley

Another witty, political novel by Christopher Buckley, in which a gorgeous, intelligent woman teams up with a WASP-y politician/lawyer/TV pundit to do…something in Washington. But you know what? Buckley still manages to crack me up with his writing, even though some of his characters (particularly those with breasts) could be lifted from any one of his novels and dropped into another without missing a beat. Because the characters aren’t really the point — the story is. And the story is pretty damn good.

In Little Green Men, John O’Banion hosts a Sunday political talk show which prides itself on tearing down its guests (like…the President). O’Banion is revered and feared in Washington, and he likes it that way. Then one day, a disgruntled employee of a secret government agency responsible for selecting people to “abduct”, in order to keep the American people believing in aliens, decides to teach O’Banion a lesson. Suddenly, O’Banion is using his talk show to talk aliens, not politics, and everything kind of goes to hell.

The writing is intelligent and sharp, even with a main character named Col. Roscoe J. Murfletit, and I love how I always have to look up a couple words whenever I read a Buckley book. The man’s vocabulary is astonishing. And his take on Washington alternates between hilarious and a little unnerving, considering how embedded he himself is in the political scene.