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Up Country, by Nelson DeMille. Warner Books, 2002, 706 pages, $26.95 (U.S.), $37.95 (Canadian).
Awaiting the much-ballyhooed publication of Nelson DeMille's "big Vietnam book," as some PR tub-thumpers called it, I had hoped he would allay my growing suspicions that he is one of them.
Can't say as it does. Oh, "Up Country" is a page-turner, no doubt -- and a good thing, too, when you have more than 700 of them to flip. You can lose a lot of good sleep and gain a hernia getting drawn into this big pile of hypnotic stuff.
And DeMille, 58, certainly should know what he's talking about when he sets a novel in modern Vietnam, more than a quarter century after the United States bailed and lost its "undefeated" title. He was there in the middle of heavy fighting around Hue in the late '60s as a first lieutenant with the famous 1st Air Cavalry (you may recall all those helicopters in "Apocalypse Now"). He was awarded a Bronze Star and enough bad memories to pull them up and lace his plot with them in convincing style.
Like many Vietnam combat veterans who feel the pull, he's been back to wander his old battlegrounds in recent years.
But DeMille -- despite his millionaire status and impressive success in writing cerebral, violent fiction that easily translates to the movie screen -- has encountered this vexation before in his dozen big novels.
In "The Lion's Game," his brilliant thriller of two years ago, featuring fiendish terrorist Asad Khalil, every paragraph, every sentence, was not only believable, but sadly predictive in spots of Sept. 11. Yet, no closure. At the end, John Corey, the NYPD detective hero, gains a wife and loses a perp. We are left wondering where the evil assassin Khalil got off to.
In "Plum Island," DeMille's creative 1997 mystery featuring that little speck of land off Long Island's far reach, he lures the reader with initial promise of insight into real-life rumors of germ warfare research there -- then digresses into an adventure about buried pirate treasure. Where did all that biowarfare stuff go?
In "Cathedral," the author's 1990 Manhattan bloodbath about an IRA terrorist and hostage-taker, a symmetry of sorts is achieved, yet even his chapters dissolve into endings -- however evocative -- of predictable gunfire and mayhem.
"Up Country," when I last checked, was the main Book-of-the-Month Club selection and already the No. 2 hardcover on The New York Times best-seller list. That's understandable.
Paul Xavier Brenner, a maverick, out-of-favor gumshoe from the army's CID -- the Criminal Investigation Division -- is sent back to Vietnam and the area where he once served to riddle the demise of an officer whose name is on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, and who died in that distant conflict some three decades ago.
This is unusual. War dead are war dead, casualties not investigated as individual criminal homicides.
Here, there is suspicion, bolstered by recent North Vietnamese evidence, that this may have been an American-on-American killing. The prime suspect ends up being another officer who has risen in the interim to a lofty, lofty rank in the United States government.
To reveal how high would give away the plot. (Hint: He works in the White House and isn't the president.)
But there are several things that go clank as this plot unfolds.
The first is that Paul Brenner is the character John Travolta played in the 1999 movie made from another hold-your-breath DeMille novel, "The General's Daughter."
Even though Brenner is obviously a character with dire experiences parallel to the author's in Vietnam, the reader can't help but envision Travolta on page after page, plodding around in rice paddies and jungles to no good end.
Second, the back story consists of Travolta's -- er, excuse me, Brenner's -- falling in love with the gorgeous lady CIA agent assigned to shadow him so he doesn't screw up, and so she can keep her Langley masters one step ahead of the Pentagon.
Their activities are more reflective of a Club Med holiday than a homicide probe that will have diplomatic and national security fallout.
Additionally, this woman is cartoonish and strikingly unprofessional. Sure, federal agents and spies are interested in sex. Consider FBI traitor Robert Hanssen. But still, the CIA must be howling over this one. Maybe their agent will be played by Sharon Stone in the movie.
Third, and worst, is the unlikely idea that the current federal investigative structure would send a CID detective on a mission this sensitive and criminal (even though the CID is empowered to investigate crime in the army anywhere in the world).
Once a proud and effective agency, the CID has of late been riddled with attrition in ranks and bad publicity. Some of these guys couldn't find a horseshoe in a bowl of soup.
In an examination of why military "suicides" are far more likely than death in combat and exceed the civilian rates of suicide, Yours Truly two years ago discovered many of these deaths appear to be obvious murders.
Probably to protect institutional reputation, to avoid time-consuming probes, to rubber stamp commanding officers, and to avoid harming enlistment and promotion rates, the CID in recent years has made ludicrous and forensically unbelievable determinations of "suicide" in cases including:
The CID tried to convince his widow the veteran captain killed himself because a routine training exercise on a video war game had not gone as planned.
In the hours before his death, the allegedly depressed and nervous captain buried several three-point shots in a pickup basketball game, drove one of his men to the hospital, bought a 437-page book and a new set of captain's bars, called his wife to discuss bowling with friends and the purchase of a new stove, laid out his shaving gear and hung a freshly-pressed uniform at the foot of his bunk.
Yep, sounds to me like somebody planning to do himself in.
This was, says Vernon Geberth, the former Bronx homicide commander who wrote the authoritative text, "Practical Homicide Investigation," an "out-and-out homicide, no doubt about it."
The dead soldier's glasses were perfectly placed on his nose, undisturbed by the shot or his fall, his body was obviously "arranged" neatly, according to the game warden who found him, and there was no trace of dirt found on the heel of the rifle butt, which necessarily would have been propped on the ground to have caused such a self-inflicted entry wound under his chin.
In the young man's car, 400 yards away, were two uneaten McDonald's meals -- two burgers, two soft drinks, two fries -- on the back seat.
No gunshot residue tests were done on the gloves.
The Army psychologist said the kid was depressed over a girlfriend back in Ohio, even though he'd broken up with her two years before his death.
A supposed suicide note, belatedly received by the surprised girl, was written and signed in crude block print.
The soldier invariably had written in script since puberty.
When his parents were sent his clothes, they discovered a small hole, the size of a hypodermic needle, through his field jacket and shirt, with a matching blood spot on the shirt. No mention of that in the autopsy.
The supervising CID agent now claims the FBI, the NSA, and the National Park Police screwed up the case. The NSA confiscated 153 disks from Wright's computer and desk, and wouldn't allow them to be examined.
He was found shot to death with a .38-caliber hollow-point round in a stable where he was hiding from military officials. He had threatened days before to turn himself in and tell inspectors everything he knew.
No fingerprints on the gun. No gunfire residue or blood on his hands. No suicide note.
The CID told his mother it was a suicide even before beginning the investigation, and later offered a "psychological autopsy" that claimed he was depressed because of the "types of relationships" his mother had had with various men. The mother's apartment was broken into sometime during the period of the investigation.
But, I digress.
There are many such questionable cases in congressional investigative files, and no one but the grieving parents gives a hoot -- the Pentagon least of all.
In "Up Country," the CID agent is smart as a whip, with brilliant instincts and tradecraft. His logic process is stunning. He would never have allowed even one of the contrary clues offered above to go untracked.
But again, DeMille leaves the reader frustrated and hanging at the end. The primary suspect walks away. The murder remains officially unsolved. DeMille's denouement goes AWOL.
Hey, just like in real life.
Paramount Pictures has already purchased the movie rights to "Up Country" -- for a measly seven figures -- and Travolta is negotiating a reprise role for the part of Paul Brenner.
Who is this humble reviewer to quibble with such commercial triumph? I love DeMille's style, but it's pretty clear the author leaves his heroes with plenty of work to clean up in future novels, on purpose. He's already said he's bringing back John Corey and terrorist Khalil in his next book. If DeMille keeps it up, I'm just going to wait for the movies.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | February 19 2002 |