Ward Just (1935–2019)

Stringer is a Civilian Intelligence Agent sent on a mission to Vietnam to destroy an enemy supply convoy. He has a sly sense of humor. When paired with a Captain named Price, Stringer must practice patience. Price is younger, more impulsive, yet in charge. There is no casual conversation between the two men. Neither has confidence in the other. They are on the same team but distrust keeps them miles apart. To keep himself from thinking too much about Price, Stringer recalls his failures: his marriage, their visit to a classmate in a mental institution, Stringer's short time as a newspaper man. These recollections keep him on task in the present. Ever present is Just's commentary on the damage of war.… (mere)

Ward Just, a novelist of manners in the Henry James fashion, died in 2019. Here he tries his hand at a caper novel. Just's narratives are filtered through interior monologues, though. So the action is revealed slowly, very slowly and deliciously. No surprise, there's not much of a caper here, just a lot of history repeating. The end is preordained, with the real mystery coming from the expatriate characters' self-deception. It seems the message always changes with the interpretation. I read this alongside a recent story of a fictional translator, Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.… (mere)

We tell our leaders to keep us secure, but in our personal lives we resist playing it safe. It's a contradiction made for a Ward Just political thriller. Thomas is a painter in the south of France, putting some distance on his past as a CIA collaborator, Still, he's tight with his buddies in the spy game. When his wife dies among unsavory characters, Thomas is alone with his insecurities, and perhaps in deeper than he thought. Eventually face to face with her killer, Thomas knows just what to do in the interrogator's chair. It's a story told by indirection, a narrative full of known unknowns. The reader doesn't know which details are important, and neither do the spooks. The novel explores the nature of perception, memory, craft and terrorism, and the limits of the impulse to never forget.… (mere)