Dog Soldiers is not what I expected. After seeing the paperback on my father’s bookshelf so many years ago, I thought it was a novel about being a soldier in the Viet Nam war (ala the excellent The Things They Carried). Instead, it is a sort of counterculture noir thriller version of The Treasure of Sierra Nevada. It’s about a Viet Nam journalist who decides to smuggle heroin into the country and sell it off. But it all goes awry as crooked federal agents become involved as his former Marine buddy Ray Wise goes on the lam with his wife and three kilos of uncut heroin. It’s got a lot of references to the era from which it was spawned: “turned on,” “right on”, “freaks,” etc… But it is a compelling character study of some very different types of people, as well as reflection of the times. I heard that it was made into a film called “Who’ll Stop The Rain,” which was one of Nick Nolte’s first starring roles-I would like to see it sometime to see how it translates to film, but I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll find it here. It was a very dark, fascinatingly compelling read.
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