SUMMARY: The protagonist, a troubled and embittered Vietnam veteran, is a photojournalist for a struggling wire service. In 1986, he takes a photograph of a rock star. The next morning, three different callers claim the same man in the photo’s background is a long-missing relative and an MIA from the Vietnam War. The hero and the callers search for the mystery man, meet resistance from the White House, and uncover a horrific plot. The novel is rich with gritty detail including a fatal F-4 fighter jet mission, the massacre at My Lai, POW fantasies, and the Challenger space shuttle explosion. And it features quirky characters like a flaky, hyper-sexed divorcee who, despite numerous affairs/marriages, still yearns for her MIA first husband … an overweight forensic anthropologist with a world-class mind, major-league body odor, and a big-time crush on the divorcee … and a grieving father having unresolved anger toward his missing son, and most everyone else. This book will test your emotions and patriotism. You may alternately laugh, cry, seethe, and be rocked with blindside twists.
The Passing of the Night: My Seven Years as a Prisoner of the North Vietnamese
This is one of the most memorable books to come out of the Vietnam War in which General Robbie Risner describes with moving candor the years of pain and deprivation he endured as as a POW in Vietnam. His is the real story of what went on in the prison