Year of the Monkey - Hardcover

Argo, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0671663607 ISBN 13: 9780671663605

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1989

Synopsis

Acclaimed as one of the most important novels of the Vietnam War, Year of the Monkey takes us into the savage jungles where death waits in every paddyfield and into the apocalyptic world of political corruption where friendship and betrayal become unavoidable, where murder and love are common as body counts. It is the gripping story of two American soldiers trapped in a sinister web of cold-blooded murder during the shattering Tet Offensive of 1968.
 In the poisoned soul of Saigon, Russ Payne, an army journalist partying his nights away, when a wild grunt named Willingham is lobbed into his life like a grenade. Willingham is the lone survivor of a Special Forces squad. He's been reassigned, inexplicably, to Payne's cushy rear unit, and Payne's fragile peace is suddenly shattered as Payne is forced to spy on his new friend as part of a secret CIA investigation. On a mind-bending odyssey into the depths of the jungle, he follows Willingham in his bloody, righteous quest to avenge the massacre of his former unit—and discovers a hell of his own.
 Payne falls in love with a woman who welcomes him into the fold of a Viet Cong camp, he witnesses the death of his childhood friend, and discovers the horrific meaning of attrition. All this ultimately leads to him committing a crime beyond redemption. 
 In stunning scenes of combat and intrigue, we glean as in no other novel or movie the patch-quilt nature of the Vietnamese people and the murderous deceit of sinister, American body-count politics.
In the year of the monkey, Payne will come to understand the terrible consequences of following orders--and of ignoring them.

About this title

About the Author

 Ron Argo is an award-winning journalist and novelist and a decorated Vietnam veteran. Critics hailed his best-selling historical novel, Year of the Monkey, one of the seminal novels of the Vietnam generation, "that instantly ranks him alongside America's best war novelists-- Mailer, Stephen Crane, Jones and Dos Passos." His novel, The Courage to Kill, is the first thriller in the Ray Myers series, featuring the crime reporter in a deadly fight to win freedom for a young woman charged in the murder of her father, a story challenging the fabricated teachings that memory loss means childhood sexual abuse. Baby Love, the forthcoming second novel in the series, pits Myers against a bumbling but ruthless gang involved in the dark world of international baby smuggling. His latest novel, The Sum of His Worth, a gripping historical novel set during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, is the compelling story of a teenage boy who sides with a progressive dentist in a deadly struggle against the KKK to save an African American community in Alabama. Father of two, Argo lives with his wife in San Diego, California.

Reviews

In this grim, harshly ambient Vietnam War novel by award-winning journalist and Vietnam veteran Argo, a soldier's court-martial for the apparent murder of his Army buddy serves as the frame for a nightmarish flashback. Soldier Russell Payne is an Army reporter whose life is relatively easy until the appearance of Willingham, a wild, undisciplined enlistee who arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, to join Payne's unit. An internal investigation team wants Payne to foster a friendship with Willingham, whom they say is a survivor of a renegade commander's illegal guerrilla squad. What eventually moves Payne to kill Willingham--a fate made known in the first chapter--serves as the author's hook, and the climactic twist delivered by Argo is both surprising and credible. Argo's Vietnam is very much the one readers and film-goers have come to know in recent years--a pestilent netherworld of inhuman living conditions and impossibly murky moral choices. This unsparing story is an effective confirmation of those portrayals.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sent by the Army to a journalism post in Vietnam, Payne is thrown in with battle veteran Willingham. Payne is ordered by the CIA to spy on his new buddy and is sent on a series of assignments, using his journalist's status as a cover. When he meets Saang, a native girl who may be Viet Cong, he is swept up in still more ambiguous adventures. What Payne eventually learns: deception and destruction are multiplied to cover up even more devious activities--on both sides. A stunning climax leaves Willingham dead and Payne standing court martial for his murder. This is an exciting novel that gives the reader much to ponder. No other Vietnam novel this reviewer has read conveys so achingly the subterfuge, duplicity, frustration and cover-ups of the Vietnam War. Highly recommended.
- Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown and Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0671663607
• ISBN 13: 9780671663605
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 382