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'Exciting stuff with plenty of heart-palpitating action gingered up by mystery and intrigue . . . Leather is an intelligent thriller writer' (Daily Mail on THE TUNNEL RATS )
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But Colonel Joel Tyler has other plans for the British colony, plans which involve four Vietnam War veterans and a spectacular mission making use of their unique skills.
Vietnam was the one thing the four men had in common before Tyler moulded them into a team capable of pulling off a sensational robbery.
But while the vets are preparing to take Hong Kong by storm, their paymaster, Anthony Chung, puts the final touches to an audacious betrayal. At stake is the future of Hong Kong . . .
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It's a couple of years before Hong Kong is to revert to Red China. Chinese expatriate Anthony Chung meets in Paris with ex-U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Joel Tyler to set in motion plans for the Heist of the Century in Britain's last jewel in the crown. To that end, Tyler implements an elaborate scheme to recruit other U.S. Army vets of the Vietnam war for the venture. He ultimately attracts ex-Huey pilot Dan Lehmen, a phony investments scammer on the run from the Mob, ex-Tunnel Rat Eric Horvitz, a border-line sociopath living alone in the Canadian woods, ex-Huey door gunner Larry Carmody, who left Nam with a chip on his shoulder and minus one forearm, and ex-Huey crew chief Barton Lewis, a lonely divorcé recently diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. Then there's ex-Air America, i.e. CIA, chopper pilot Chuck Doherty, who fled a murderous Special Forces operation in Laos, only to stash his Huey in the Thai jungle and live as a Buddhist monk these last twenty-two years.
This thriller is intricately constructed with more than the usual amount of character development. There's even a plot twist, although the reader is let into the secret 120 pages before the book's conclusion and it's left only to see how Dan, Eric, Larry, Bart, and Chuck fare before the dust settles.
THE VETS is actually a hard book to put down, but I was left with a niggling dissatisfaction. I think it's because there wasn't anybody serving as a protagonist whom I could cheer on from the sidelines, though Lewis perhaps comes the closest. The ultimate beneficiary of the plot is only introduced seven pages before the last, and my reaction was "Why should I care?" In the meantime during the previous 557 pages, our "heroes" have shown a willingness to break the law and/or have been instrumental in ruining the lives of people who, if not always likable, are at least innocent bystanders in the conventional sense. Now, mind you, I'm no goody two shoes. If I was starving, I'd forcefully shove into the gutter an 80-year old granny reaching for the world's last slice of pizza. But, that wasn't the case here, and I'm knocking one star off THE VETS for it's lack of a moral lynch pin.
What I will say is that of the approximately 5,000 books I have read... Read more
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