BOOK DESCRIPTION
Vietnam, 1963. A female Viet Cong assassin is trawling the boulevards of Saigon, catching US Army officers off-guard with a single pistol shot, then riding off on the back of a scooter. Although the US military is not officially in combat, sixteen thousand American servicemen are stationed in Vietnam 'advising' the military and government. Among them are Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, two army investigators who have been tasked with tracking down the daring killer.
Set in the besieged capital of a new nation on the eve of the coup that would bring down the Diem regime and launch the Americans into the Vietnam War, Play the Red Queen is a tour-de-force mystery-cum-social history, breathtakingly atmospheric and heartbreakingly alive with the laws and lawlessness of war.
The dead American major lay faceup on the sidewalk in his stocking feet. His khaki shirtfront gleamed with blood, a sizable pool now spreading toward the gutter. A stray dog, weighing the odds of sampling some, cringed when a waiter clouted it with a broom. Street hustlers with pointy sideburns cackled as their leader mimicked the mutt’s lapping tongue.
Two plainclothes Vietnamese dicks were chatting up some military police in green fatigues with QC in white letters on their black helmet liners. The tallest of the army cops stood bareheaded in an open jeep, forearms leaning on the bar of red flashers that ran along the top of the windshield. Our own Air Force military police were in khakis and black boots, MP emblazoned in white on their sleeve brassards and helmets. One sergeant took 35-millimeter photographs of the major while another readied a body bag.
Saigon municipal police – who everyone called ‘white mice’ both for their all-white uniforms and their cowardly inclinations – busied themselves waving away vehicles streaming past the cordon. The higher ranks stood in the shade and made a bored show of checking their wristwatches, as it was nearly time for their ngu trua, the long midday break the Vietnamese took during the worst of the heat. Another American getting himself murdered had them acting even more inconvenienced than usual.
AUTHOR BIO
Juris Jurjevis (1943-2018) was born in Latvia and grew up in Displaced Persons camps in Germany before emigrating to the United States. He served in Vietnam for fourteen months,nine days and two hours,his original departure date delayed by the Tet Offensive. He wrote two other novels The Red Flag and The Trudeau Vector, which was published in ten other countries. Publisher and co-founder of the Soho Press,Jurjevis worked for decades in the book industry.
PUBLICATION DATE: 27th August 2020
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