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Fiction. Mystery. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Thegripping murder mystery about an upstanding military officer - the base commander's daughter - who's been leading an unsavory double life. When a professional military woman with a pristine reputation is found raped and murdered, a preliminary search turns up certain paraphernalia, and sex toys that point to a scandal of major proportions, The chief investigator is reluctant to take the case when he learns that his partner will be a woman with whom he had a tempestuous affair and an unpleasant parting. But duty calls and intrigue begins when they learn that several top-level people may have been involved with the "golden girl" - and many have wanted her dead. "DeMille is a master at keeping the reader hanging on to see what happens next." - Associated Press.… (more)
User reviews
But that isn't to say that the book doesn't have it's flaws. The female characters of the book are somewhat stilted and flat, and the re-emerging romance between Brenner and his ex-fling and co-investigator Cynthia Sunhill seems to just kind of... happen. They seem to go straight from spitting venom at each other to canoodling lovers without any real conflict resolution. But maybe it just seemed that way because the story went by so quickly, I'm not sure.
DeMille also dropped certain clues like Ann Campbell's missing West Point ring that seemed--to a reader well schooled in the "rules" of a who-done-it mystery--to point to an unexpected conclusion to the mystery. But the missing ring and a couple other things were never actually explained. It's a decidedly realistic touch, but I still felt somehow gypped about it anyway. The book could have been shorter, too. The main characters figured out who the murderer was and proceeded to dick around for the remaining 150 pages of the book--so much so in fact that I was expecting the supposed murderer to be a red herring and for there to be some sort of surprise awaiting me at the end. But alas, no such luck. The murderer was who they figured it to be, and the novel moved on to its expected conclusion. So you could say I was surprised by the lack of a surprise at the end. I guess that's what I get for my silly reader expectations.
But all my complaining aside, I really did enjoy the book. Nelson DeMille is a great story teller, and since his voice, style, and main character are so entertaining, you don't really mind the flaws in the novel. That's why I gave the book a rating of 4 stars.
Of course, it's not intended to be an action novel, but rather a police procedural (army police, but still) so it wasn't what I had thought it was when I picked it up as a Reacher replacement.
However, I did enjoy it; there is some snarky humor in it, and it's nicely rude on certain subjects, and the characters feel legitimate. The female characters even seem to be written relatively well (at least they weren't simpering idiots). I'll read the next in the series because I think Brenner is a fun character.
Has a few twists, but...
didn't have any trouble reading it through, which is more than can be said for some titles I've had for years and
The mystery of who is the murderer is quite well done with several people all seemingly having the motivation or being
Having also been pleased with The Gold Coast I shall look forward to more DeMille.
in the middle of the night. Paul Brenner, a member of the Army's
So, to the book review. It starts with a military CID (investigator for the military, like an investigator) who returns to the Fort in south Georgia where he had been a young drafted soldier during the Vietnam War. A young woman has been found who is the general's daughter, and the rape specialist assigned to the case is his former lover.
The whodunit action and wondering about who killed the general's daughter, the intrigue within the military base, the working around the military code of conduct, are all very central to the mystery and very well explained. I had seen the movie when it came out, and had forgotten the catalyst that caused Ann to be found in the way she was found; in the movie they show the conversation between father and daughter while it is merely described towards the end of the book.
DeMille's respect for our armed forces while the head-desk of their rules and regs permeates this book and I am glad that a former military man wrote such a book. It could have been a mere denunciation of the military after the Tail Hook scandal, and instead it brings up the idea of extraordinary people, and some ordinary people, living a life of service with arms to their country.
It's rare that I give a novel 5 stars. I usually reserve that many for important works of non-fiction. I make an exception for this novel. Aside from Brenner's wise-cracking, always enjoyable, the book has an intriguing mystery, a thorough investigation, lots of suspects, and even a bit of romance.
This is one of those books which some of the more puritanical among us will complain is unnecessarily graphic. I disagree. The novel is about honor, disgrace, writing past wrongs, a whole panoply of emotional responses and how they affect us. The scenes are incredibly uncomfortable and necessarily so because they pull the reader into the moral quagmire faced by the participants.
I listened to it as an audiobook read by Scott brick who is the perfect narrator for this title.