Behold the Fire

POW/MIA Zach Johnson finally emerges from Southeast Asia twenty-five years after his capture only to find himself being hunted by forces--including the U.S. government--more insidious and deadly than his former captors. A first novel.

A dizzy whirlwind of a debut thriller that ultimately runs out of air: about the fate of an American soldier trying to return home 25 years after having been listed as missing in action. Do the garroted corpses of employees of the Manhattan-based international arms-dealer Parker Global have anything to do with the savagely wounded hulk of a Colonel Everett Ransom found bleeding in the Vietnamese jungle? First-novelist Salinger suggests a connection as he cuts rapidly between the idyllic paradise of postwar Vietnam and the NYPD Bluelike milieu of Homicide Lieutenant Mel Fink and his partner, Don Barton. As Barton and Fink (their names are juxtaposed, making for a series of campy allusions to the Coen brothers movie) are seduced but not corrupted by various denizens of Parker Global, Colonel Ransom awakens to find himself under the care of Isaac ``Zach'' Johnson, a saintly Army medic who was captured by the Viet Cong and has survived all these years as a village doctor. Ransom vows to take Johnson, and his Vietnamese girlfriend Mee Yang, back to the States--no simple task, thanks to a sky-high pile of thinly brushed bad guys inside Parker Global, the Pentagon, and the news media. Soon, everybody wants to kill Johnson and Ransom, a former bad guy who did secret arms smuggling for Parker Global. Salinger doesn't let any of his microscopically brief chapters end without Hollywood-style ultraviolence, bedroom acrobatics, or a snickering revelation of how nasty some Americans can be. Whatever help such devices might offer, his story still collapses under the corpses of too many interchangeably vile also-rans, while his thesis--that finding out what really happened to our Vietnam vets, POWs, and MIAs is the kind of prayer that God can only answer as a curse--does not convince. A quick, breezy, confusing read that, despite its baggy plot, gratuitous sex, and ditto violence, shows the skills of a writer who is meant for finer things. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Salinger's debut novel is a well-crafted thriller that will grip readers from start to finish. The story opens with NYPD detectives Fink and Barton investigating the murder of an arms seller employed by Parker Global, a large defense contractor also selling to Third World countries. The second chapter switches to Southeast Asia, where U.S. Army medic Zach Johnson has been a POW/MIA for the past 25 years. Not all politicians and military brass are elated when Corporal Johnson emerges from the Cambodian jungle; in fact, someone wants him dead. Short chapters cut between a large cast of interesting characters, who are brought together by cleverly contrived circumstances for a fast-paced denouement. Along the way, numerous plot twists provide genuine suspense. Recommended for public libraries.?Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This suspense plot ostensibly revolves around a simple-hearted MIA medic in Cambodia. Zach Johnson functions as a billboard for stronger-willed big shots, such as a U.S. senator who milks the MIA issue and a retired general who runs an arms company. Alongside their schemes, Salinger introduces the fulcrum in the action, Vietnamese assassin Bo. Seems that the Vietnamese want revenge against the Parker Global firm for selling them shoddy explosives. The murders of Parker personnel then allow Salinger to introduce tough-guy detective Mel Fink, who promptly starts a liaison dangereuse with a Parker woman who plays her own game. The conflicting agendas rendezvous in a limousine carrying Fink, Bo, Johnson, and the woman to a plot-resolving fistfight on the Newark Airport tarmac. Although the story line's gears grind too much and sometimes never even mesh, the characters and the action are energetic enough to entertain a good number of thrill seekers. Gilbert Taylor