A few easy lessons in how to run wars and kill people

By DAVID HILL*

These two blockthrusters apparently come as part of a publisher's push for Father's Day. What a splendid idea - give Dad books on how to run wars and kill people.

This paperback version of DeMille's latest strains to get 850 pages inside its cover, just as our author strains to get 30 years inside his narrative.

It's Washington, now. On the brooding black batwing of the Vietnam War Memorial is one name that shouldn't be there. Ex-Army cop Paul goes with conventional reluctance to find out why.

It means revisiting a foreign country's history and an American individual's history. With beguiling honesty, this sprawling, shambling, sweeping story implies the two are of equal value.

Past and present jostle as Paul and sumptuous, superfluous Susan travel by bus, boat and bike towards a Dark Date With Destiny. We meet vengeful Vietnamese, booby traps, leeches and lechers, old enemies, pawky humour, portentous prose. DeMille works hard at philosophical bits, which mostly end up embarrassing. You can feel the relief as he gets back to the conspiracy. He is an excellent travel writer. His descriptions of sublime or squalid landscapes from Saigon to Hanoi are quite splendid. Forget an airline ticket; buy the book.

Chris Ryan doesn't go as far back in time, but he trundles much further into improbability. In the Falklands War, virile SAS chap Mark saves an Argentinian girl spy. His next mission is to knock out an air base on Tierra del Fuego. His lads are ambushed and have to fight their way into Chile.

Ryan now leaps two decades in one line. The generals are back in Argentina and they want to be back in the Falklands. Mark has to save much of the world again and that girl spy is still around.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to provide thriller plots, and this particular plot clatters along energetically. Machines are more important than mortals. Chinooks, Sea Darts, AFVs and GPMGs bang, boom and blaze. Sex is rendered in much the same way. Characters are mostly supermen or sadists, though there is a New Zealander called Kiwi who provides sheep jokes.

Yes, you can read Ryan without fear of emotional involvement. And next Father's Day there'll probably be similar stories on how the War Against Terrorism was really won.


Nelson DeMille: Up Country

Time Warner

$22.95

Chris Ryan: Land of Fire
Century

$34.95

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.