Matt McAvoy Book Review

Review by Margaret –

I remember from my childhood the National Service Advertisements calling up our young men to fight in Vietnam.  I remember the anti-war demonstrations, and I know the psychological scars Australians still carry from fighting.  So, when I read Steven Max Russo’s The Dead Don’t Sleep, it came as no surprise to learn that his Vietnam veterans have a few hang-ups as well.  Hard drinking, tough talk and drug use abound, and the three perpetrators as well as the protagonist possess such an assortment of American-made firearms that the novel frequently reads like an advertisement for the NRA.  Casual murder for such men is no problem, but a planned homicide is even better.  Like all aggressive powers, the soldiers committed atrocities upon the civilian population of Vietnam under the euphemism of ‘counter-terrorism’.  But Frank Thompson’s work with Special Operations has consequences for him and his nephew, forty years later.

This novel is an action thriller rather than a mystery; the mystery is explained in the prologue.  I’m not a huge fan of prologues, which Russo uses to describe the key event necessary to understanding the plot.  Personally, I would have allowed this to unfold gradually throughout the novel, keeping the readers asking ‘why’ and ‘what’ for as long as possible.  The first three chapters following the prologue concentrate too much on popular culture – I found that they put a handbrake on the pace – but by chapter four, when it was obvious which way events were turning and why, the plot had gripped me much more firmly.  Russo knows his stuff and keeps the ball rolling, by short chapters with plenty of action and suspense.

There is a concentration of gun culture in the novel, so that it seems a truism: once a soldier, always a soldier.  For these hardened men, the war in Vietnam never really ended.  They believe their experience permits them to kill civilians for a purpose, in this case, their own.  The last half of the novel reads like hardcore gaming that has left cyberspace and entered reality for a deadly purpose, and without morality – hunting Viet Cong; hunting game; hunting men.