DON'T MEAN NUTHIN'

As his long-dormant conscience slowly revives, a Black Ops assassin wrestles with his role as a pawn in the Vietnam War in Lealos’ (Pashtun, 2014, etc.) powerful novel.

In 1969, Frank Morgan is an American assassin in Vietnam known as “the Night Snake.” He receives his orders from an agency, Phoenix, that doesn’t officially exist, is answerable to no one, and funds itself in part with money from drugs, prostitution and the sale of orphans. Morgan fits right into this world, however, as he was brought up by a father he calls “the Colonel,” a militaristic lunatic who always raised him to be a soldier. At first, Morgan has little problem with taking part in dubious operations for the greater glory of the United States, although he does have nightmares that he beats back with drugs and drink. But when he kills Liem Tran, a Sorbonne-educated woman with striking green eyes, it particularly affects him, even though Phoenix says that she’s a top Viet Cong cadre chief. When he learns that the mission was actually revenge for Tran’s refusal to sleep with a South Vietnamese official—and that most of his other assignments may be equally bogus—Morgan goes rogue, killing people he’s not assigned to terminate while letting other targets go free. Lealos presents Vietnam as a Dantean landscape from which no one ever really returns, not even the survivors. He underscores its futility through Morgan’s cynical, first-person Mickey Spillane–speak, which draws every comparison by using words of war (“The only noise the M79 thumper in my chest”; “The sound was like snapping my M16 to full auto”; “The kiss lasted longer than it took between hearing the hushed thud of a mortar tube and the impact”). Overall, it’s a gut-wrenchingly realistic portrayal of how violence, politics and corruption combine to destroy the souls of people and countries.

A dark redemption tale, but not one for the faint of heart.