Just Finished Reading: Play the Red Queen by Juris Jurjevics (FP: 2020) [346pp] 

Saigon, 1963. It would’ve been nice to have been on the investigation from the start but since when has the Army done anything in a straightforward manner? So, with the third American officer shot dead in broad daylight on a busy street Staff Sergeant Ellsworth Miser and Sergeant Clovis Robeson of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division are practically starting from scratch. Not that there’s much to go on. Each of the victims was a US military ‘advisor’ to the Army of South Vietnam, each was killed at fairly close range with a single shot from an automatic handgun with the killer apparently being a young girl who then escaped on the back of a motorbike. In a city of thousands of motorbikes and tens of thousands of pretty young girls riding on their backs that information was practically useless. So, where to start? There’s a basic rule in police work – if you can’t investigate the murderer then investigate the victims. The ‘random’ killings of American soldiers turned out to be nothing of the kind – they were linked, they knew each other or worked in the same department, the area of the Army responsible for the importation of American supplies into the South. It was an area awash with money. Were the officers on the take or had they refused to be corrupted? Was someone simply cleaning house prior to the much rumoured ‘coup’ that had been talked about in the local bars for months now? Was the hit-girl Viet Cong or someone closer to home? With regular in-fighting and powerplays between members of the South’s ruling ‘elite’ who could tell which death-squad was responsible for which execution or assassination? It was impossible to keep track. What made things worse, if they could get worse, was that the American ambassador was in town doing deals and making waves. His life had already been threatened and he might even be on the assassins ‘list’. Closing the case wasn’t going to be easy in a town full of refugees, undercover agents, factions and teenage killers. But orders are orders – find the girl and stop the killing... 

As usual I picked this up because both the blurb on the back and the distinctive cover looked ‘interesting’. I was most definitely not disappointed with my choice! This turned out to be one of my best reads of the year so far. The author writes beautifully and, having served in Vietnam for “fourteen months, nine days and two hours” knows his way around the city, the people and the culture of the region (like knowing NOT to pat a Vietnamese kid on the head!) which made the reading both highly entertaining and very informative. It was, honestly, like being there complete with the oppressive humidity, the constant sound of traffic (and distant gunfire), the regular random power cuts and knowledge that if you stayed there long enough you were going to open the wrong door, meet the wrong person or just start the wrong car and that would be that – Game Over. It’s a real shame that the author died not long after completing this novel – his third – so I can’t look forward to reading him in the years ahead. I’ll definitely be looking out for his other novel based in Vietnam though. If you’re interested in the very early phase of the Vietnam War – when the American’s were still in their ‘advisor’ phase before that started shipping in troops by the tens of thousands and carpet-bombing entire countries – including those not even involved in the war – this will intrigue you. If you just want a bloody good read and want to lose yourself in a faraway place and a very different time I can't recommend this book too highly. One thing I need to do, going forward, is to read up on the US Ambassador – Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. If he’s anything like his character in this novel, he deserves my attention! More to come on the region, the war and from this author.