An engrossing look at two morally ambivalent men confronting foes who are greedier and deadlier than they are.
One of America’s supposed secrets becomes the backdrop of this thriller.
It has long been rumored that the CIA used raw opium to finance covert operations against the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. In this tale, the CIA recruits botanist Bill Murphy, just out of college, to help the agency produce opium in the area of Southeast Asia known as the “Golden Triangle.” When the policy of Vietnamization catches Bill by surprise, he gets rescued by Special Ops soldier David Anderson, the man who will become his partner for life. After the CIA leaves Bill high and dry a second time, in Afghanistan, he and David become “producers,” converting the raw opium into 99 percent pure China White heroin, which they supply to the triad network in Hong Kong, to be distributed worldwide. Bill handles the product while David takes care of the finances. But after a time, it becomes obvious that someone in the triad wants to displace them from the supply chain. The pair ends up on the radar of the U.S. military’s drug-eradication mission as well. The two decide to strike back after friends and loved ones are killed. They pit the triad and the military against each other and escape. But their plan to sail off into the sunset on their superyacht fails because there are too many people who still want them dead. As David tells Bill: “Every time we relax and start to feel normal, we will constantly be looking at our sixes, because they will always be one step behind us and forever in our shit.” So they undertake one last mission. Grant (Mahdi, 2016, etc.) impressively brings readers inside a dark, dirty world of drugs and money. The author has created likable antiheroes in Bill and David, who belatedly grow consciences. The danger-packed novel is well-researched with plenty of details, especially about the military gear being employed. One drawback is the book could have used more thorough editing, with capitalization and punctuation errors throughout inhibiting the generally smooth-flowing narrative (for example, “He loved anything related to plant life was already accustomed to the humidity in Michigan and he didn’t ask a lot of questions”). But overall, this is an absorbing, heart-wrenching tale.
An engrossing look at two morally ambivalent men confronting foes who are greedier and deadlier than they are.Pub Date: April 23, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4414-9247-0
Page Count: 334
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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