The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly

“The detective Harry Bosch helps a small police department track a serial rapist, while as a P.I. he aids a billionaire in search of a possible heir.”

That’s how The New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list describes the book that sits at number nine this week: Michael Connelly’s The Wrong Side of Goodbye (Little, Brown, 394 pp., $29). That high-concept sentence is accurate, but doesn’t even begin to approach the detective-genre artistry Connelly once again exhibits in his nineteenth Harry Bosch cop procedural featuring the eponymous, not-quite-retired LAPD detective who served as a tunnel rat in the Vietnam War.

As he has in all the Bosch books-–beginning with The Black Echo in 1992—Connelly spins out a page-turner with vivid characters, a twisting plot, and evocative depictions of Harry’s home turf: the greater Los Angeles area. This book also has a significant Vietnam War theme in that the search for the billionaire’s “possible heir” leads Harry to a young Navy corpsman who died in a helicopter crash in 1970 in Vietnam. Harry’s service in the war comes up in the course of his investigation and he has a flashback or two to his two memorable tours of duty.

The book, in fact, opens with a flashback of sorts, to a very convincing evocation of an extraction of a group of Marines from a hot LZ. It doesn’t end well. Connelly then moves right into his two-pronged story in which Harry, who is working a volunteer investigator job for the little City of San Fernando, also takes on a free-lance assignment directly from an ailing, aging billionaire.

Both stories take unexpected twists. Harry runs into situations and roadblocks that he seems to face in every book. He has to deal with a cranky police supervisor who is out to get him. He tends to bend the rules to get what he needs to bring a bad person to justice. He uses his brain power and decades of experience to figure out the identity of an arch-evil bad guy (the serial rapist). He displays physical courage. He suffers emotionally when good cops (and civilians) are harmed. And he won’t rest until he brings the culprits to justice.

Michael Connelly

It all adds up to a greatly entertaining read that stands with the best of the Bosch’s—and the best Bosch’s are terrific books.

There are two minor missteps relating to the Vietnam War that I will mention only because they will not ring true to Marines or to any Vietnam War veteran who took an R&R. Connelly more than once refers to Marines as “soldiers,” and calls R&R “leave.”

Here’s hoping the publisher fixes those little errors for future printings. If that happens, this will be a perfect Harry Bosch.

—Marc Leepson

Twenty Days in May by John L. Mansfield

John L. Mansfield served for more than thirty years as an officer in the Army, the National Guard, and the Army Reserve.  His short book, Twenty Days in May: Vietnam 1968 (PublishAmerica, 170 pp., $24.95, paper; $7.96, Kindle), recounts the actions of his unit—Alpha Company, 4^th of the 31^st Infantry Regiment—during twenty harrowing days at the height of the Vietnam War.

What makes this book unique is that—aside from the recollections of then 2^nd Lt. Mansfield—it also uses his unit’s daily staff journal, its daily situation reports, official history, and radio logs, as well as several memoirs written by men in his company.

These twenty days in May represented a very hostile and intense period for Alpha Company. They had 69 wounded in action and nine killed. Most of the action revolved around the taking of Nui Lon, also known as Ghost Mountain. Mansfield, a life member of Vietnam Veterans of America, gives an excellent account of what it’s like to be an infantryman.

Along the way, he demonstrates some of the difficult choices facing Army infantry officers. Mansfield shows how a good officer leads from the front, not the rear. He follows orders, even after his platoon is tired and undermanned and facing a well-equipped NVA regiment.  Mansfield demonstrated this in his decision to follow orders to advance up Nui Lon at night, even though it placed his platoon at greater risk.

John Mansfield

This is a serious book spiced up with a couple of humorous incidents, such as Mansfiled admitting to the CO that his weapon was accidently fired and scrambling to buy replacement ammo on the black market so no one would know.

The book’s true message for me lies in the last paragraph in which Mansfield talks about Tom Brokaw annointing those who came of age during World War II the “greatest generation.” Mansfield believes the men in his company in Vietnam should be considered the greatest generation.

“They went where they were sent by their government and did as soldiers have always done throughout the years, their duty as they saw it,” he writes. “These men are the real heroes and my greatest generation.”

— Mark S. Miller

From Chicago to Vietnam by Michael Duffy

Michael Duffy received his draft notice at the age of nineteen. He served in Vietnam as an officer with Battery C in the 7th Battalion of the 9th Artillery. He started as a Forward Observer and Fire Direction Control Officer. In the fall of 1968 he was promoted to Executive Officer of this unit. Battery C consisted of six 105 millimeter howitzers that provided artillery support for the infantry in South Vietnam’s III Corps.

Those dry facts do not begin to show how brutal parts of Duffy’s tour of duty were or how lucky he was to survive. He arrived in Vietnam on January 31, 1968, the opening day of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam. His duffelbag was lost. All he had was the suntan dress uniform he left the United States in—and no weapon.

Everyone kept telling Duffy that he looked like a target since he hadn’t even been issued his green fatigues. And he did stand out in the madhouse of small arms fire. Running to a helicopter heading for Binh Hoa, Duffy fell, scraping his hands and bloodying his knees. Bien Hoa was under attack so the helicopter landed elsewhere. So on that first day in country Duffy wound up being a mess, confused and befuddled from what befell him in Vietnam–and from three days with no sleep.

He was told again and again, “You’d better get a weapon,” but nobody had one for him. Duffy ended up having to steal a uniform. He ripped off the name tags and made it his own. Somehow he acquired an M-16.

When he arrived at Bearcat, the area was free of trees and foliage due to Agent Orange spraying.  Early on, Duffy’s brother, Danny, who was also serving in Vietnam in the Army, came to visit him for three days. That’s how the picture on the cover of From Chicago to Vietnam: A Memoir of War (Inkwater Press, 328 pp., $28.95, hardcover; $17.95, paper; $4.99, Kindle) came to be.

The late Danny Duffy is the smiling one on the left.  He survived his Vietnam War tour and the book is dedicated to him. Did Agent Orange kill him later? We are not told.

“Bearcat was never overrun while I was stationed there, and short of a few rocket attacks, it was a great place to spend your year in Vietnam,” Michael Duffy says. But his book is far from boring.  Perhaps it is because Duffy is a born storyteller. From Chicago to Vietnam is filled with great stories, and it seems that something exciting is happening in or near Bearcat for the entire time we are there.

For this reason, I highly recommend his book to anyone with the slightest interest in the role of artillery in the Vietnam War. Duffy tells it all and every page is of interest.

Duffy also talks about his return to America where he realized his dream of attending college. He did well at Colorado College and after.

—David Willson

Such a Lovely Little War by Marcelino Truong

There were comic books back in the 1960s, but the graphic novel hadn’t yet been invented. Now there are two extraordinary graphic novels about the Vietnam War. The first, Dong Xoai, Vietnam 1965 by DC Comics’ Joe Kubert, published in 2010, could have been stripped down into an ambitious comic book project. It’s a visual record of a battle, and Kubert does an amazing job telling the story.

Marcelino Truong’s recently published Such a Lovely War: Saigon 1961-63 (Arsenal Pulp Press, 280 pp., $26.95, paper) is a product unique to the graphic novel: It is graphic, autobiographical, and a novel. And it takes a novel look at the war by telling the story through the perspective of a child in the early 1960s.

This is no ordinary child, however; the boy’s father worked in the South Vietnamese diplomatic corps and became the director of Agence-Vietnam Presse, as well as the official translator for Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Not that Diem needed a translator, we learn, but because he wanted time to compose his thoughts.

The book beings in Washington, D.C., and ends with the father’s appointment to a post in London, but for most of the book young Marco is witness to the war’s slow buildup in 1961-63. With a Vietnamese father and a French mother, young Marco reflects the biases of the Catholic elite even while he’s astounded, excited, and horrified by the ever-widening war.

He watches wide-eyed as an enormous aircraft carrier delivers war materiel and helicopters in December 1961. He ducks for cover when rogue Vietnamese pilots attempt a February 1962 assassination of Diem by bombing the Presidential Palace. He marvels at a display in downtown Saigon of confiscated Viet Cong weaponry.

Marcelino Truong

Even as he addresses such complex issues as the failure of the Strategic Hamlet program, class relations among the Vietnamese, the use of Agent Orange, and the self-defeating racism of the American troops, as a child he also has to deal with family issues: the birth of a sister, the death of friends, and the precarious state of a bipolar mother suffering to maintain balance and a family in a war zone.

Such a Lovely Little War (this English translation from the original French is by David Homel) is a fascinating book told in a new way from a new perspective. It’s a new history with interesting comparisons between the North and the South, and between the old ways and the new.

It doesn’t disappoint.

—Michael Keating

A Portion of the Loveliness by Christoph Feldkirchen

Christoph Feldkirchen’s  A Portion of the Loveliness (Feldkirchen Press, 212 pp., $11.95, paper; $7.95, Kindle) is a work of fiction. There are three short novels in this book; the first one, “Nothing Could Happen,” deals with the war in Vietnam. That title is taken from a long quotation from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that sets the tone of the book. It is a scene in which a man-of-war ship sends shells from the Congo River in the African jungle trying to hit unseen enemies. It reminded me of the American war in Vietnam, which I suspect is intentional.

The main character of this short novel, Feldkrichen (like the author), tells us he entered Navy boot camp in September 1965. Later he describes his onboard duty on a ship nicknamed “The Bucket.”

“If you were unlucky, you might work all day, be CQ all evening, stand a midnight to four a.m. watch, grab two hours of sleep, and be on duty all next day,” he writes. “Everyone was tired, all were irritable and there was no end of griping.”

I’ve not read many novels or memoirs dealing with Navy duty during the Vietnam War. I enjoyed this one. When it ended, I found myself wishing for more, a rare feeling when reading a book I knew nothing about before I started it.

This short novel is light hearted, well written, and it reinforces my long-ago decision to spend my tour of military duty in the Army. The graphic descriptions of seasickness made me slightly nauseous.  (Full disclosure: The chemo I am on makes me feel that way often enough anyhow.)

Thanks, Christoph Feldkirchen, for writing this book. The other two novellas also were good. Please consider writing a full-length novel or memoir of your time in the Navy. I promise I will read it.

—David Willson

The Light Where Shadows End and No Thanks by R.G. Cantalupo

I have a tendency to skip over narrative in italics in a book. R.G. Cantalupo’s long narrative, The Light Where Shadows End: A War Hero’s Inspirational Journal Through Death, Recovery and a World Without Home (New World Publishers, 171 pp., $9.99, paper), which the author calls a “lyrical memoir,”  is entirely printed—every single page of it—in italics, except for the illustrations. Why? I’ve no idea and the author does not tell us. I’m guessing, though, there was a purpose.

Cantelupo served in Vietnam as a Radio-Telephone Operator (RTO) with the 25^th Infantry Division in 1968-69, and was awarded a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. In May 2015 he returned to Vietnam. He walked along Highway 1 “as thousands of motorbikes rushed by.” He sat at a table and reconciled with former “members of The Peoples Army, soldiers who lived in Trang Bang and who fought against me in 1968-69.”

The war’s legacy in Vietnam, Cantelupo says, includes “leaving hundreds of thousands of unexploded bombs to kill more children,” as well as “fourth generation birth defects and genetic mutations caused by our massive spraying of Agent Orange.” That situation “will not allow for reconciliation.”

A member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the author took part in the 1971 Winter Soldier Investigations where he confessed to committing crimes and atrocities. This small book contains many powerful, poetic vignettes of the above, and covers much of the same ground as this same author’s book of poems, No Thanks (All in One Publishing).

Many of these two dozen poems in No Thanks were first published in the journal “War, Literature, and the Arts.” Their titles give a good idea of what they’re about: “Trang Bang,” “Monsoon,” “Search and Destroy,” “The Execution,” “Agent Orange.”

The poem, “Agent Orange,” hit me the hardest. How could it not?  Agent Orange is what’s killing me.

Breath in,

Nothing’s forever

Even this orange-brown haze

dies down, leaves a

tree of bone

There is a vignette in The Light Where Shadows End about a nurse nicknamed “Peaches” who the author fell in love with. There’s a full-page photo of her in jungle fatigues. There are many other full-page photos in this book, both famous ones and some I’ve not seen before. The photos are not credited. Some of them should be. John Wayne and his classic film The Green Berets are briefly discussed.

Read this book in tandem with his book of poetry, despite the italics.

—David Willson

Coppola’s Monster Film by Steven Travers

Steven Travers, a former professional baseball player, is the author of twenty books, nearly all of them about sports. His latest book is decidedly not about sports: Coppola’s Monster Film: The Making of Apocalypse Now (McFarland, 240 pp., $39.95, paper).

If you want to know everything about the famed 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, this is the book for you. Seemingly every detail is to be found between these covers. I recommend that a reader first dive into Eleanor Coppola’s 1995 book, Notes, which also is subtitled The Making of Apocalypse Now, and watch her documentary film, Hearts of Darkness: A Film Maker’s Apocalypse. Then Travers’ book.  At the end of it the author includes chapter notes and a bibliography, which will lead you as far as you want to go and well beyond.

The book includes only three photos, but they were carefully selected: Cpt. Willard (Martin Sheen) with Crazy (Dennis Hopper);  Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall) in his famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” scene; and Francis Ford Coppola, the director, with John Milius, the screen writer, and Sheen. There’s no photo of Marlon Brando.

McFarland books are sometimes leaden and hard to read, but this one is very readable. It contains has many good. behind-the-scenes stories. Travers found and interviewed folks who opened up to him and he made the most of that.

The book is organized into twenty-three well-written chapters and comes at the reader from a right-wing posture. When the author mentions the singer Harry Belafonte, for example, he feels it is necessary to say that he was a protégé of Paul Robeson, “black Communist.”  Travers goes on to say that the entertainment industry was taken over by the secular religion of liberalism, except for country music, “which remains Christian and Republican.”  That would a surprise to Willie Nelson, the Dixie Chicks, and sundry other non-Republican country music folks.

This book is well worth reading for information on Apocalypse Now, but a certain care is advised. Read with caution.

—David Willson

Monkey Screams by Robert Joe Stout

Robert Joe Stout is a graduate of Mexico City College and has written books about Mexico. As far as his military service, he looks to be about the right age to be a Vietnam War veteran.

Monkey Screams (FutureCycle Press, 90 pp., $15.95) starts with a twenty-page section of poetry called “Testimonies from Vietnam.” It contains fifteen of the best poems I’ve read dealing with the Vietnam War: “Hero,” “Messenger,” “Good Reports,” “Propaganda Photos,” “In Command,” “God’s Grandeur,” “Yankee Know How,” “Purple Heart,” “Signals,” “Supply Clerk,” “Second Lieutenant,” “Ambush,” “Night Patrol,” “Why?” and “Day After Cease-Fire.”

The rest of the poems in this book are all worthy, but it’s the Vietnam War poetry that make this book. The very first poem, “Hero,” has a line about “four Marines with blankets where their legs had been, sit waiting for decorations just like mine.” Hard stuff to read, but necessary reading for everyone.

Most people don’t read a lot of poetry, but this is a good place to start. The poems are written to be accessible, and the book is very beautiful. The non-Vietnam War poems are about everyday things that we can all identify with, and I did.

I’d like to know more about Bob Stout, but I’ll settle for this.

The author’s website is robertjoestout.weebly.com

—David Willson

U.S. Elite Forces by Marti Demiquels

U.S. Elite Forces: Uniforms, Equipment & Personal Items, Vietnam, 1965-1975 (Andrea Press/Casemate, 250 pp., $61), is a collection of more than a thousand photos of virtually every uniform, piece of equipment, and weapon used by U.S. Army advisors, LRRPs, Special Forces, and Marine, Navy and Air Force elite units in the Vietnam War.

Author Marti Demiquels somehow managed to gather hundreds of uniforms, military equipment, and weapons and photographed them for the book. He organizes the book into sections on units and uniforms (including head gear and footwear), weapons (broken down into firearms and grenades and ammunition), edged weapons (knives and machetes), and demolition charges. The equipment is presented in categories such as radios, survival (vests, markers, signal kits, compasses), and medical gear.

Demiquels also includes a long section that contains photo spreads of what he calls the “personal memorabilia” of elite unit veterans. The page for former 1st Sgt. Rick Grabianowski, who served with a MACV-SOG recon company in Vietnam in 1970, for example, includes two snapshots of Grabianowski in Vietnam, a photo of a silk flag with the MACV-SOG logo, and a 101st Airborne Division death card.

This coffee-table book is an illustrated paean to American special forces in the Vietnam War—and a useful reference book for anyone interested in looking at the things they carried and wore in the war.

—Marc Leepson

The Gun Room by Georgina Harding

The British author Georgina Harding has published three acclaimed novels—The Solitude of Thomas Cave, The Spy Game, and Painter of Silence. Her latest, The Gun Room (Bloomsbury, 224 pp., $26), takes a proud place with the previous books. I find no evidence that Harding has any military background, but there is a lot of the Vietnam War in this novel, and no noticeable clunkers.

The main character is Jonathan, a young British photographer with a farming background who hitches a ride out to the war on a helicopter and blunders onto a My Lai-type massacre in a village. He takes a photograph of an American soldier sitting staring into space. This photo ends up on magazine covers as an iconic image of the Vietnam War.

The war follows Jonathan around for the rest of the story, even to Japan, where he goes to take more pictures and where he falls in love with a Japanese girl named Kimiko. She helps him come to terms with the war, but he then connects with the soldier he’d photographed in Vietnam.

Georgina Harding

Jonathan flees back to the farm in England, and tries to put the war behind him. But the reader senses that he will always be scarred by his brief time in the Vietnam War—and by his choice to take the photographs he took.

No novel I have read better describes how powerful the memory of war can become entrenched in the mind of a young man. I loved the book and how free of the usual clichés it was. John Wayne’s name, for one thing, is never mentioned.

This is a fresh imagining of the American war in Vietnam, and it is much needed.

Thank you, Georgina Harding, for this fine book. Buy it and read it.

—David Willson