ENBRERA TINTREG GILGARRA

A troubled Vietnam veteran wrestles with his past in Laudrigan’s second fictionalized memoir.

Titch, who shares a name with the author, loves bacon, Scotch, and the 1945 John Steinbeck novel Cannery Row. He grew up in an abusive home and became a “youth scarred with hate and anger.” While serving the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, he cultivated a talent for violence. Afterward, the Army asked him to remain enlisted, but he refused because he felt that there were no worthy wars to fight. Instead, Titch placed large sums of inherited money in various bank accounts, including one offshore. He planned to become a killer for hire, using major city newspapers to communicate with clients. But now, after taking his final leave of the Monterey, California, Army base, Titch notices someone following him as he heads for his warehouse apartment. Later, a lethal confrontation with men claiming to be FBI agents sends him fleeing to a hideout that he once knew as a teen in the mountains of New Mexico. In his subterranean mountain lair, Titch takes stock of his difficult life through journal writing. He poses as an archaeologist when touring New Mexico and uses his soldierly knowledge to prepare for the worst in his compound. Laudrigan’s harrowing two-part saga unfurls at a meticulous, sinister pace. The tension of jungle warfare bleeds into the prose, resulting in blunt but poetic depictions. Of one friend, for example, Titch writes that he could see that “the lights of sanity...were slowly dimming.” The main character admits to a “tendency to drift” in the narrative, and, indeed, readers may need to find patience with its copious flashbacks and occasionally overstuffed sentences (“Outwardly surprised, not expecting this change in routine venue, the lead trainer nodded nonplussed”). There’s also hardly any dialogue; instead, readers will find long reams of exposition reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s Gothic style. Ultimately, though, Laudrigan delivers a chilling period piece that successfully encapsulates the frustration, trauma, and paranoia of the Vietnam era.

An effectively disturbing tale that will transport readers to a dark time in American history.