The Last Detail - Hardcover

Ponicsan, Darryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0491004869 ISBN 13: 9780491004862

Publisher: Signet, 1971

Synopsis

Unlike the other branches of the armed services, the navy draws its police force from the ranks, as temporary duty. The risk is that men on Shore Patrol might bring their humanity to the task. This accounts for the underlying tension in "The Last Detail", which takes place during the height of the Vietnam War. Billy Bad-Ass and Mule Mulhall, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, awaiting permanent orders, are given a detail: "chaser" duty. Their assignment is to escort and deliver Larry Meadows, an 18-year-old sailor, from Norfolk to Portsmouth, N.H., where he is to serve an eight year sentence in the brig. It's good duty, on the face of it, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the true innocence of their prisoner, even though he is guilty as charged. Failure, or refusal, to carry out their duty is never a question, no matter how much they hate the detail or how wrong it seems, and yet something must be done, some gesture made in order to help their hapless prisoner survive the long ordeal he faces, and to purge their own sense of shame. "The Last Detail" was Darryl Ponicsan's first book and it catapulted him into the front rank of American novelists. It was made into the 1973 film starring Jack Nicholson, and has become a classic of the Golden Age of American cinema. This new edition of "The Last Detail" coincides with the publication of its long-awaited sequel, "Last Flag Flying", also available from The Wright Press.

About this title

About the Author

Darryl Ponicsán is the author of thirteen novels and an award-winning screenwriter for both film and television. Born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, he taught high school after attending Muhlenberg College and earning an MA at Cornell University. He served in the US Navy from 1962 to 1965, then did social work in the Watts area of Los Angeles and taught high school before the success of his debut novel, The Last Detail, allowed him to become a full-time writer. His latest novel is Last Flag Flying, the sequel to the first. He resides in Palm Springs and Sonoma, California.

Review

"One of the ten best novels of the year." —Philadelphia Inquirer

"Salty, bawdy, hilarious, and very touching." —Variety

"Honest, heart-wrenching . . . Keeps his serio-comic escapade snowballing until the very end." —The New York Times

"The writing is superb, the pace headlong, the irony tempered with curious gentleness." —Cosmopolitan

"A lean, funny, bitter book." —Boston Globe

"Will make servicemen say: 'sure, that's the way it is." —Newsday

"First novels tend to be flawed some place, but Darryl Ponicsan's is the exception." —Sacramento Bee

"An accomplished writer with a sure storyteller's touch." —St. Louis Post Dispatch

"[A] gem of a first novel . . . Fast-paced . . . [the] dialogue is often hilarious." —Fort Worth Star

"A well-spun yarn that runs the gamut of emotions in anything but an ordinary story." —Fresno Bee

"So deeply human that the reader is apt to believe . . . that he is actually witnessing the events." —San Raphael Independence Journal

"Ponicsan in his first appearance proves himself not only a master but a model of dialogue." —San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

"[An] excellent first novel . . . Wonderful dialogue." —Publishers Weekly

"The characters are uneducated, tough, uncultured career sailors, but their warmth and affection come through, and readers become really involved with them—the innocent victims . . . of a heartless society. This book is sure to be a success." —Library Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0491004869
• ISBN 13: 9780491004862
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192