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Set in South Vietnam in 1972, three years before the final fall to the Communists from the North, this hard-hitting story describes how the U. S. government finally tried to take control over the spiraling use of drugs by American G.I.s. Over twenty-five percent of U. S. troops had used opium and heroin by 1971. More than half were using marijuana. When a shipment of heroin is found hidden in a metal casket of a killed Marine, alarms finally sound. A highly clandestine unit of investigators is formed to combat the problem. The cultural gulf between the two nations is brought out in sharp relief by the author's no-holds barred portrayal of the corruption and organized crime that permeated South Vietnamese society during this period, reaching all the way to the Presidency. Told primarily through the eyes of a French businessman, his half-Vietnamese daughter, and a young Air Force Lieutenant on the investigation team, the violence, intimidation, bribery, and greed that reign supreme in South Vietnam is dramatized.
Historical fiction is here used to shed light on a little understood factor in the hopeless program of "Vietnamization," the attempt to transfer responsibility for the South's defense to the Vietnamese. The plot is well-thought out, the characters palpably perceivable, and the theme outstandingly felt. The main element, nevertheless, is information. From how hard it was made for a G. I. to actually marry a Vietnamese girl to how the effort by America in combating communism was exploited by corrupt Vietnamese to get very rich, the novel fairly brims with knowledge. A number of misspellings mar the integrity, but overall, the author has produced a gripping and valuable addition to the literature on the Vietnam war.