Up Country – Nelson DeMille, 2002 ★½

Back in Nam

Up Country is a thriller with few thrills, a cross-country jaunt that goes nowhere and sets up a finale that lands flat as a pancake after 700 pages.

Nelson DeMille had the craft to deliver much better. God knows he had more experience to draw upon than he wanted.

Paul Brenner is a retired U. S. Army investigator summoned back into service in 1997 to solve a 29-year-old crime committed during the height of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. A Tet veteran himself, Brenner overcomes much reluctance to journey back to the land where he lost both his innocence and many comrades, a nation with its own deep wounds and a marked ambivalence about Americans.

Brenner tells us the score in his first-person narration: “When you begin a journey like this, you have to expect the worst, and you won’t be disappointed.” Unfortunately, I have to agree.

Why does the American government send a private citizen with a checkered work history and many well-vocalized doubts on such an assignment? Why does Brenner agree to go, and keep going at risk of a horrible death despite sensing he’s not working for the good guys? It boils down to the brash recklessness every protagonist in a Nelson DeMille novel has in common.

Brenner served with the First Air Cavalry Division (just as DeMille did). Now middle aged, he must bring his detective skills to bear on the case. A North Vietnamese soldier was the only living witness to the murder; Brenner’s job is to go back to Vietnam and question him.

“I see…so you have a missing witness to a thirty-year-old murder, no suspect, no corpse, no murder weapon, no motive, no forensic evidence, and the murder took place in a godforsaken country very far from here. And you want me to solve this homicide.”

Up Country begins with Brenner getting his assignment at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D. C. "I’ve got my memorial: the Wall. It’s a very good memorial because it doesn’t have my name on it." Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/44543483785427032/

Though DeMille does try to justify this concept, it never makes sense. In the prior DeMille novel featuring Brenner, The General’s Daughter, his bullheaded desire to see justice done whatever the outcome angered Army brass and cost him his job in the Criminal Investigations Division. He also has emotional combat scars to work through. As he puts it when visiting a Ho Chi Minh City bar decked out with props from Apocalypse Now: “I saw the movie. Actually, I lived the movie.”

A decades-old murder with Vietnam as the setting seems promising. But instead of developing a mystery story, he puts the murder investigation on ice for the first 350 pages while Brenner is taken around the former South Vietnam in the company of his latest squeeze, beautiful Susan Weber, who not only translates for Paul but sleeps with him, too.

The two chat at bars and in seedy hotel rooms, with Susan explaining Vietnam’s turn toward capitalism in the post-war period. She’s full of information about customs and culture, not so much about herself:

“Do you know anything about my assignment that I don’t know?”

She didn’t reply.

“Tell me.”

“I can’t. I can’t lie to you, so I can’t say anything.”

The rooftop bar at the Rex Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City, site of Paul Brenner and Susan Weber's first meeting. "I looked her in the eye and said, 'Brenner, Paul Brenner.' I thought I heard the band playing 'Goldfinger.'" Image from http://www.vietnam-guide.com/rex-hotel-rooftop-bar.htm.

Yet this lack of trust doesn’t prevent the pair from getting hot and huggy under enemy surveillance, or trading Neil Simon wisecracks about this crazy mess they happen to be in.

DeMille went back to Vietnam to research this novel and his descriptions take up much of its bulk:

“Vietnam is a series of contradictions – the government is Communist, totalitarian, atheist, and xenophobic. The people are capitalists, free-spirited, Buddhists, Catholics, and friendly to foreigners. I am speaking of the south – in the north, it is quite different. In the north, the people and the government are one. You need to be more careful if you go to the north.”

Along with the occasional war flashback, these travelogue-commentaries offer engaging detours. But they slow the plot to a crawl.

A munitions pile left by U. S. troops, now part of a museum site at the former Khe Sanh battlefield. Paul Brenner finds many old combat zones transformed into tourist attractions. Photo by Jason M. Brown from his website, https://medium.com/@jasonmbro/we-can-t-be-overrun-9d8b332c0edf. 

Much of the story consists of ominous foreshadowing, with Brenner recalling his time in the jungle hearing the clicking sound of Viet Cong on the move or trading harsh barbs with the menacing secret police commander, Colonel Mang. Brenner is told to be as unassuming as possible and avoid angering his hosts. Naturally he does the opposite.

There is no doubt Paul’s mission is dangerous, since he keeps telling us how incredible it is to be still alive in his first-person narrative. Of course, a lot of suspense is lost being as this is a first-person narrative. Sensing this, DeMille emphasizes Brenner’s ignorance:

It’s very difficult to solve a case when all the evidence you have is written or verbal, and the written evidence is bogus, and the verbal stuff is lies.

For 550 pages he doesn’t even know who he is looking for or why. The only thing he knows for sure is he can’t trust anyone, not even Susan. Especially not Susan.

Motorbiking in North Vietnam looks pretty fun here and is apparently quite popular with tourists. In Up Country, it nearly gets Paul and Susan killed more than once. Image from https://motorbiketourexpert.com/motorbike-tours/.

Yet for all the tension, Paul and Susan take time to dine with resistance leaders, visit a nude beach, and joyride up country to Hanoi in an illegal motorcycle. He also gets off some choice digs at the secret policemen who trail his path, particularly Mang:

“Have you ever been to Hanoi, Mr. Brenner?”

“No, but friends of mine flew over during the war, though they didn’t stop.” Good one.

He smiled and said, “In fact, some did stop and were lodged in the Hanoi Hilton.”

Not bad. I love pissing contests.

Being such a habitual line-stepper makes Brenner a strange choice for an espionage assignment. But since he enables DeMille’s bottomless capacity for wisecracks, he gets the job.

Once upon a time, I read a Nelson DeMille novel that kept me reading until three in the morning and never quite let me go: Plum Island. It was a novel about the dangers of biological warfare being loosed upon the world. I know, what a wacky, hard-to-imagine concept. It managed to be all at once exciting, suspenseful, and very funny.

Author Nelson DeMille. Like Paul Brenner in Up Country, he was decorated for his service in Vietnam, including a Bronze Star, an Air Medal, the Combat Infantryman Badge, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. Image from https://www.writerswrite.co.za/literary-birthday-23-august-nelson-demille/. 

Since then, I’ve had zero luck with DeMille. Every subsequent novel of his I’ve read was overstuffed with filler and wisecracks. Suspense novels follow a formula, of course, but if DeMille’s approach here is too rigid, his execution is too fat. What DeMille needed was an editor with a machete.

The ending of Up Country is its weakest part, despite containing a well-executed surprise or two. DeMille avoids a pat ending by not giving us much of an ending at all. Instead, Brenner discovers the mystery, as well as the reason why solving it may not be in everyone’s best interests.

What does he do with the information? We don’t quite find out. Instead the story drifts off ambiguously, with final thoughts from DeMille as articulated by Brenner on the Vietnam War which is the real purpose of the thriller. DeMille wants to honor his war experience, for himself and his comrades, and that’s fine. It just doesn’t make for a good thriller.