Assault by Fire

August 1, 2020
It's Boston in the '80s, and Andy Roark, private eye and Vietnam vet, wants "to feel like I was relevant again." He's asked to solve the murder of two Vietnamese Americans involved in the mysterious "Committee," an organization vowing to drive the communists out of that beleaguered country. Roark's skill at his job is displayed amid a gift for self-conscious mockery, as though he knows he's a character in a novel. He models his mustache after Magnum's, totes a gun like Bond's, dresses spiffy like Spenser, but wonders if gun oil will stain his pretty blue shirt. Further, he offers a rare portrait of a type anyone who's been in the military will recognize: "What I had been desperate for as a child had been provided for me by the army." In flashbacks, he offers little-seen reportage on that awful war, like the desk-bound officers who take a helicopter tour of the war zone so they can qualify for hazardous-duty pay. There's plenty of room for detection and a blood-soaked finale, but it's these tidbits that linger.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)