The Reckoning
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
A “superb, thrilling, and satisfying” (Vince Flynn) thriller that transports us to Cambodia in search for answers to mysteries left over from the Vietnam War.
Armed with only a camera and iron determination, thirty-two-year-old photojournalist Molly Drake arrives in Cambodia to cover the US Army-led search for the remains of an American pilot who went missing during the Vietnam War. In this eerie wasteland pockmarked with human bones and live landmines, the people hold more secrets than the landscape, from archaeologist Duncan O’Brian to John Kleat, a caustic vet hunting for his long-lost brother.
When Molly’s camera captures a flight helmet buried among Khmer Rouge victims, diplomatic powers force her and her civilian comrades off the dig, only to be met by a typhoon. Trapped, the group discover a more astonishing find, revealing a war that never died.
Molly’s survival comes to depend on her journalistic skills to solve a forgotten murder among these warriors left behind. In the end, her only hope for salvation is to redeem the lost souls that surround her.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Long (Year Zero, etc.) delivers a suspenseful, tightly written tale of a nightmarish journey into the dark past and present of Cambodia's former killing fields. Molly Drake, a would-be photojournalist, accompanies a U.S. Army-led search for the bones of a pilot shot down during the war. She meets Duncan O'Brian, an archeologist at a local dig, and John Kleat, who has come back to the country repeatedly, seeking his brother's remains. When bones unexpectedly turn up, Molly photographs them, breaking her agreement with the army not to take pictures of bodies. The captain in charge dismisses her along with O'Brian and Kleat, and the trio make their way to an ancient, fog-enshrouded Angkor-like city where they have evidence an army patrol went missing years ago. They soon find themselves lost in a labyrinth of ancient stone, in circumstances that quickly grow as dire as those in which the patrol evidently found itself. Long's considerable knowledge of Cambodian folklore and history is put to good use as he superbly depicts the war-scarred country, its people and its beautiful, hazardous landscape lush, verdant, strewn with land mines, studded by bones. Although the inner lives of the characters are not as detailed as they could have been, the author's use of supernatural elements is subtle and effective, and adds an extra dimension to this solid, coolly told, smoothly paced narrative.
