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Red Flags. Juris Jurjevics (2012)

by Juris Jurjevics(Favorite Author)

3.93 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1842437666 (ISBN13: 9781842437667)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

No Exit

review 1: Eric Rider is an Army Cop, a member of their Criminal Investigative Service during the early days of the Vietnam War. He is sent to Cheo Reo, a remote base in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, on a secret mission to find who is growing opium in the highlands and using the proceeds to fund Viet Cong activities. Its partly a spy mission, partly combat duty and partly a cop mission, but its a superb novel of the early days of the war. Rider goes on spy missions with the local CIA agent, while also helping a local doctor who is ministering to the Montagnard tribes people. He also aids Colonel Bennett in his camp. The remote outpost has little military value to the North Vietnamese, but hidden in the jungle it seems like many locals from the AIDE group, the South Vietnam Army... more, the Viet Kong, the North Vietnamese are all doing business. Corruption is rife.Rider must manuever among these groups and survive the machinations of the drug overlord, who is closer at hand than one would imagine. Its a great superb war novel and spy novel because it explores another side of the conflict that is not covered in other fiction about this period. How much of it is really fiction and how much is fact is hard to say, but Jurjevic's journey into his past is all good.
review 2: Last year saw the publication of a masterpiece of Vietnam War fiction, Matterhorn, which was a searing and existentially bleak example of the battle novel. This year sees the publication of this very different, and only just slightly less impressive Vietnam War novel. At about half the length of Matterhorn, this book falls roughly into the crime genre, as it tells the tale of an Army CID officer sent undercover to a small base in the Central Highlands kind of near Pleiku. It seems that the North might be financing some of its international arms purchasing through the wholesale drug production and export of heroin and marijuana. "Captain" Rider and his partner are supposed to try and find out where the drugs are coming from and who might be involved.But as well-plotted as the investigative storyline is, it's really just an excuse for the author (a Vietnam Vet) to vividly lay out the tenuousness of the American position in the country. What really pops to the fore is the complexity of the situation, as Rider tries to understand the relationships between the regular Army, the Green Beret outposts, the local CIA operative, the South Vietnamese Army unit across the road, their corrupt commander (who functions as provincial warlord), the various Montagnard tribes, the Viet Cong, local do-gooder missionaries, a sexy American medic, and more. Readers who aren't well-versed in the history of the Vietnam War will get a great introduction to the true complexity of what was happening on the ground. And if this story is anything to go by, what was happening was tons of corruption, graft, and outright cooperation with the enemy by some of the U.S.'s supposed allies. The story here paints the war as mere background, or rather, opportunity, for the well-positioned to make a lot of money. The actual outcome is never in doubt, and the parallels to present-day adventures in Afghanistan are all-too easily made.To be sure, this does not aspire to the heights that Matterhorn did, but it's just as strikingly authentic, and just as ultimately depressing in its portrayal of the futility of American efforts. The characters all come completely to life, the dialogue rings true, and the few action scenes are loaded with tension (there's a great section where Rider joins a small group to kidnap an NVA courier deep in the jungle). The one quibble I have with the story is that as things build to a climax at the end, Rider and several other main characters exhibit shocking naivete with regard to the likely effect of their harassment of the story's villain. But even that is eventually sorted out in a fairly satisfying manner. There are certainly hundreds, if not thousands, of novels written about the Vietnam War -- this one belongs in the short list of ones that are well worth your time. less

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