Targets

by Donald E. McQuinn

Book Overview

Targets: A Novel, by McQuinn, Donald E. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0523480601
• ISBN13: 9780523480602
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fighting a Shadow War

Major Taylor, USMC, is an officer whose career has included intel and infantry assignments. He has been passed over for promotion, and will end his career pushing paper in Saigon. That is, until Col. Winters recruits him for The Unit; a Vietnamese-American "deniable" unit which focuses on VC terror units, corruption, and drug dealers. Taylor becomes effective in this unit while hunting Binh, a top-level VC coordinator. Winter, Taylor, and their Vietnamese co-parts must contend with corruption from within the Vietnamese government and the American military, with a media that slants the news (and worse!), and with careerist officers within the military that have aligned themselves with anti-war senators. Taylor falls in love with his language instructor, Ly, and they must deal with racial hostility from both Americans and Vietnamese. Taylor must leave Vietnam in the end with a sense of loss. Despite the cloak-and-dagger imagery, the book is quite plausible. The military environment and the political situation are described accurately. The Unit is the result of a loong effort by Winter and his co-part Col. Loc. These two men have been working together since the Americans first arrived in Vietnam ( I believe the story itself to be set circa 1969). Don't read this book if you are anti-war; observations made by the characters will hurt your inner child.

Targets

A glimpse into the past from the eyes of a culprit. War is time of human evil and savage corruption reaching its peak; during the course of events leading up to the war, assumptions were corrected and all fear is lost. The anticipation of eager soldiers to see Vietnam is forgotten at a first glance when what is seen is not expected. A third world country, not a lush green landscape, but filled with open sewers and poverty.The introduction of a new life, and a society very differnt from his own is just the beginning to his adventure. Realistically, fear captures you as pages go by and the corrupt morals deny any hope for a peaceful existence. One man trapped by a corrupt system and captured in the conspiracy that he faces the war is tearing the country apart. Vietnam was a war with deep wounds and tragic inflictions that will never heal. Morals are tested and friends are soon lost to the war and the corruption lost in a system of power and greed.