Up Country

Nelson Demille

Nelson Demille opens his newest novel, Up Country (Warner Books, 0446516570, 2002), with the old saying that "Bad things come in threes." With this latest book, Demille's Paul Brenner returns for a third trip to Vietnam, this time thirty years after his two tours during the war. Investigating the thirty-year-old murder of an Army Lieutenant by a an Army Captain during the Battle of Quang Tri, Brenner not only must deal with the ghosts of his past an infantryman during the war, but with the present less-than-friendly security police of Hanoi and their Washington counterparts. As I've grown to expect from his previous work, I was laughing out loud by the end of the first page, but there is far more to this story and a good suspense yarn and witty dialogue.

Demille doesn't paint any rosy pictures of Vietnam, now or then. This book -- as well as Demille's previous Vietnam related work, Word of Honor -- touches on the darkest parts of the human psyche and explores significantly deeper psychological territory than the average suspense thriller. I couldn't put this one down.