I've been jonesin for a visit with Nelson DeMille's John Cory. Unfortunately that visit is several months away. Junkie that I am I picked an older story by Demille called Word of Honor.
The novel was first published in 1987,a former decorated Army Lieutenant Ben Tyson is now a corporate executive,an honest, handsome family man admired by men and desired by women. He's charged with having overseen a massacre of innocent civilians in Vietnam. Now the press, army justice, and the events he tried to forget have caught up with him. His family, his career, and his personal sense of honor hang in the balance.
DeMille does well describing the huge moral conflict of the Vietnam war. He probes those conflicting concepts of honor, duty and loyalty as they apply to one soldier and the war. To ratchet up the emotional turmoil further all the hostile witnesses are called up while friendly witnesses are lost or silent. Tyson's own sense of honor lets him give only tiny scraps of information even to his attorney. As with most DeMille novels the dialogue is witty,irreveret and sarcastic. Although it wasn't John Cory, I had a nice visit with Tyson.
Posts
