Dog Soldiers

How does a mild-mannered, middle-aged woman (me) get through a journey into hell like Dog Soldiers? It was a struggle. The saving grace was the meaty, philosphical reflections of its main characters on topics like death, the meaning of life, marriage and drugs.

This is a book about drugs, drug smuggling, drug users, drug addicts - not the sort of book I have any interest in. But what a story teller Robert Stone is - and what a story to tell.

This thriller takes place in the drug-crazy, late-Viet Nam days of the 70's. John Converse is a journalist in Viet Nam trying to find the creativity for a novel or a play by covering the war. As he is getting ready to return to Oakland, CA, and to his wife, Marge, and their young daughter, he is talked into buying and smuggling into the US, 4 kilo of very pure heroin. To him, it sounds easy. It sounds harmless. Little does he know. The heroin gets there before he does with the help of a psychotic friend, Hicks, who is making passage to the US on a mostly-empty military cargo ship. Before Hicks leaves Converse's house where he has not only dropped off the heroin, but seduced/raped Converse's wife, things are already out of control. Two federal agents acting on the wrong side of the law bust in the door and try to steal the heroin. The monstrous strength and psyche of Hicks fends them off. He steals the stash, Marge and Converse's money. Drops off the daughter in a safe location and runs for the LA area desert. The chase is on.

Stone does a terrific job of painting the characters. Marge takes tickets at a porn movie and injects a large part of her salary into her arm. Hicks is part zen adeapt, part monster, presumably the result of having lost his entire troup during a one-sided battle in the jungle. Converse is mostly just a loser with an adict for a wife, a career gone wrong and little heart remaining. Stone manages to pull empathy for this trio from the reader by creating bad guys that are ever-so more evil than them in the two agents who take up the chase, kidnapping and torturing as part of the game.

But as I said, I'm not a fan of action books. It was the philosphic musings I enjoyed. Here is an early sample. Converse has just arrived in the US and discovered that his house is trashed and his wife and daughter are gone. Hicks is nowhere to be found. Converse heads out of his house and sees a tan car following him. He meditates on the death he sees in his near, short future.

If he had just been a bit less timid in Viet Nam, he thought, he might be honorably dead -- like those heroes who went everywhere on motorbikes and died of their own young energy and joie de vivre. Now it would be necessary to face death here -- where things were funnier and death would be as peculiar and stupid as everything else.

 Dog Soldiers is by no means on my favorites list, but I'm glad I read it. I would not recommend it to folks not going through the list. It's a hard, hard tale to read.