Tucker's Last Stand
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
A CIA agent goes from the White House swimming pool to the sweltering jungles of Vietnam in this novel in the New York Times–bestselling series: “A romp” (The Wall Street Journal).
It starts with a naked president. Blackford Oakes, the most elegant spy in the CIA, meets Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House swimming pool, and has no choice but to accept the president’s invitation to skinny-dip. Even naked, Johnson is all business, lambasting Oakes and the CIA for allowing the continued infiltration of guerillas into South Vietnam. Johnson demands for Oakes to fix it, and the agent can’t refuse—it’s impossible to say no to a stark-naked Texan.
Oakes teams up with hardened mercenary Tucker Montana, and they take to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. After slogging over hundreds of miles of jungle, they hit upon a brilliant plan to stop the North’s clandestine war in its tracks. But as the 1964 election turns bitter, Oakes finds that politics and war do not mix.
Tucker’s Last Stand is the 9th book in the Blackford Oakes Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Occupied more by politics than adventure, Buckley builds his ninth Blackford Oakes tale ( Mongoose, R.I.P ) around the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed by Congress a few months prior to the 1964 U.S. presidential election. CIA operative Blackie and an Army special projects major named Tucker Montana meet in Vietnam, where Tucker's assignment is to stall the movement of troops and materiel down the Ho Chi Minh Trail and Blackie must stop similar shipments in the Gulf. Tucker, a priapic engineer who worked at Los Alamos, devises a brilliant plan, while Blackie outfits junks with radar to detect hidden cargoes. Meanwhile, back home, candidates Goldwater and Johnson spar, with Johnson eager to use the conflict in Southeast Asia to his own ends--resulting in clandestine maneuvers in the Gulf that leave even the patriotic Blackie feeling dirty. As Tucker's involvement with a beautiful NVA spy leads to its inevitable end, Blackie beds some local talent and converses archly in overseas phone calls with his recently widowed true love, Sally. A few sex scenes, a remarkable scenario at sea and fascinating glimpses of such Capitol figures as Abe Fortas, the Bundys and Robert Kennedy are ingredients in a story most memorable for the questions it raises about a still-troubling episode in our political history.
