Up Country

DeMille explores an intriguing secret, long buried amidst the chaos of the end of the Vietnam War. Paul Brenner, ex-Army CID officer and Vietnam vet and last seen in The General's Daughter, is recruited to solve a twenty-five-year-old murder within the U.S. troops. Ken Howard is smooth and smart with Brenner's snappy dialogue. He does the Asian accents just about right and relishes the smaller character roles. While heavily abridged from the monumental full text, Brenner's circuitous quest stays coherent, although the ghosts of memories and flashbacks seem to play around the edges without full disclosure. DeMille and Howard deliver a strong mix of compelling listening. R.F.W. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine


Scott Brick delivers a superior reading of DeMille's latest intriguing plot. Paul Brenner, the military cop from THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, is back to investigate a recent report of a thirty-year-old murder in Vietnam of an American officer by another American. Brenner, himself a Vietnam vet, returns to that country and teams up with Susan Webber, an American expatriate, to uncover the astounding facts sur-rounding his mission. Along the way, the listener learns about many wartime occurences that are not common knowledge. Also, as the author, a former infantry captain, tells you in a prologue, he tries to reconcile wartime Vietnam with the present--you learn that the current Communist government permits and even fosters a capitalistic society. On the lighter side, Brenner is a master of the one-liner. Brick reels them off, tongue in cheek, one after the other. The continual repartee between Susan and Brenner is almost priceless--even after twenty tapes. You hope both characters will be back in a sequel--and that Brick re-ups. A.L.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine