Book Review: Up Country

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Up Country     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Nelson DeMille
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Thriller   Vietnam or Vietnam Vet
Series: Paul Brenner
Warner, Jan 2002, $26.95, 705 pp.

After years as an Army Criminal Investigation Officer, Paul Brenner was forced to retire. His former boss Colonel Karl Hellmann asks Paul to meet him at the Vietnam War Memorial. Karl explains to Paul that an American may have murdered a person listed on the Wall. In 1968, a North Viet Namese soldier Tran Van Vinh witnessed an American captain killing an American lieutenant. Tran sent a letter in 1968 claiming what he saw. This letter has just reached the Criminal Investigation Division. Karl wants Paul to go to Nam to determine if Tran still lives and can identify the killer.

Paul wants no part of Nam having served two tours there, but reluctantly agrees to travel as a tourist though he believes there is more to the case than a three plus decade old homicide. In Nam, Paul meets Susan Weber, who serves as his translator. Besides the personal nightmares that Paul relives on his journey, he becomes entangled in a murder mystery shrouded inside espionage that reaches into the highest levels of both nations.

UP COUNTRY is a great thriller that plays out on several levels with each interesting and all tying back to the prime theme of the soul "going home". On the surface the tale is a cleverly designed mystery with spy and political implications, but it is much more than that. The novel is a character study that provides a look inside a person proving you can go home even if it is never quite the same. Nelson DeMille’s tale is bound to make everyone’s short list for best book of the year unless 2002 proves to be the equivalent 1939 cinema.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner