WHEN THE ENEMY IS TIRED

by Russell Braddon ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 1969

This one has certain irresistible elements of both 1984 and The Manchurian Candidate. In 1975 Colonel Anthony Russell of the Australian Army and his soldiers on Malaya fall into the hands of the Red Chinese who are avid to produce a headline defector. Their computer indicates that Russell can be reached so all psychological forces are marshalled to break him quickly before an exchange can be effected. Their chief ploy is to force him to write over and over the story of his life from infancy to the age of twenty, everything he can remember about what he did, saw, and felt. From this recall are extracted those experiences the Colonel remembers with distaste, and then the isolated man is hypnotized into believing that his subordinates are being executed before his eyes by disgusting methods of farm animal slaughter suggested by his forced memoirs. The suspense derives from the alternating account of the Colonel's wily efforts to resist mental or moral breakdown and his thoroughly normal, solidly upper-middleclass boyhood. The technique puts readers on a par with the Red Chinese interrogator and his computer but with the hope that the Colonel is designed to short-circuit the know-it-all machine. . . . It's a cynically satisfying something different for the boys.

Pub Date: March 28, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION