Home :: Books :: Mystery & Thrillers  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers

Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Up Country

Up Country

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 .. 35 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awesome
Review: Nelson brings back Paul Brenner from The General's Daughter into a great plot which unfolds in Vietnam. Nelson just keeps getting better!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Simply Fantastic! You've Won me Back Again, Sir.
Review: Mr. DeMille has proved himself again as one of the best storytellers overlapping two centuries. I think that Mr. DeMille's wisecracking habbit has been evolving into a better platform than his "Plumb Island+Lion's Game"' combination, and his black humour is totally coming back after the wonderful "Gold Coast." This "UP Country" is kinda transformation from his "Charm School," but the battleground is relocated from the former Soviet Russia to the Post-war Viet Nam, with a touch of his "Word of Honour."
Nice doing, Sir, really enjoyed and appreciated. THKS!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Bit Too Much Country
Review: As a travelogue of the new Vietnam and the horrors of the war from which it evolved, this book is both heavy and too long. As a romance, it's a bit thin. As an adventure story, it has too open-ended an ending. And yet this is one terrific book. Mr. Demille is one heck of a story-teller.
Bringing back Paul Breener, the prickly, conscientious investigator of The General's Daughter is only the first stroke of genius here. Brenner, in an uncomfotable retirement after solving the aforementioned mystery, is lured by his old boss to return to Vietnam to solve a recently unearthed mystery in which an North Vietnamese soldier can perhaps document that at American officer killed his own enlisted man. If the Vietnamese soldier is still alive. If the he is to stay alive. If, indeed, the U.S. services and investigative bodies want the story unearthed or buried forever, along with perhaps Mr. Brenner.
His contact, the enigmatic and lovely Susan Weber, insinuates herself along each stop of his investigation as it winds dangerously Up Country, and soon becomes his lover. But is she there to help him, spy on him or perhaps execute him?
All unfolds eventually, each incident uncovering more of Susan Weber's loyalties and where they lie, but the book is too long and too laced with the hell of war for comfort.
Still, I couldn't put it down. Four stars. It would have been five stars if it were 100 pages shorter.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: For Tourists
Review: DeMille's latest reads like a tour guide of Viet Nam.
Definitely not a page turner, I had difficulty just
picking the book up every night. Much too much dialouge.
The only way I could finish this novel, was to speed-
read through it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: My Favorite Wise Guy
Review: In Up Country, Nelson Demille brings back my favorite smart aleck, Chief Warrent Officer Paul Brenner. I don't know if Nelson Demille saw action in Veitnam, but his book Up Country, and character Paul Brenner certainly give this book a sense of realism, of "having been there and done that." Brenner has a talent for irritating most of the other characters in the novel, and his journey "up country" is fast-paced and haunting as Brenner describes his wartime experiences to his traveling companion Susan Weber. Demille makes it seem as if Susan is the first person to hear Paul's memories of combat.

Speaking of Susan, I for hope we haven't heard the last of her. She is smart, resourceful, beautiful and so sexy. She is just the type of traveling partner for whom a man could only hope.

Up Country is a great book, and Nelson Demille continues to be my current favorite author.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Beaucoup numba one book
Review: I was in and out of the old RVN several times in the 60s and early 70s, and was absolutely astonished by how well Demille brought the present rushing back to collide with the past. There is not a false note in this book. The fact that he waited nearly 30 years from the time he served there until he published this novel tells me he also has the wisdom to know when he was finally ready to write fiction against the backdrop of his own wartime experiences. Could the story really happen as he wrote it? Probably not, but that didn't spoil my pleasure. My next wish is to see John Travolta return as Paul Brenner in the film version of the book!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Vietnam Revisited
Review: Up Country was very revealing as well as compelling. It provides insight into the Vietnam experience then and now. With frustration and chutzpah, Paul Brenner journeys across his former battlefields, taking the reader through all the emotions Brenner had not resolved. And there is a case to be solved. The case, which is interesting and keeps you guessing, seems almost secondary to the journey. I liked it and I am looking forward to reading more by DeMille.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Way too long..didn't love it
Review: I'm sitting here reading some great reviews of Up Country and I'm thinking were we reading the same book? I've read all of DeMille's books and loved them. I did not love this one. The first 350 pages are a sightseer's tour of Vietnam with (of course) a new love interest. Paul Brenner does very well with the ladies. The story is not riveting - Nelson please let your editor DO SOME WORK. The back flap says Mr. DeMille went to Vietnam recently and was moved by the trip. The book reads like a travelogue with a hashed-over plot he kept in a file titled "writers block-use when desperate".

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Journey to Viet Nam
Review: I bought this Nelson DeMille book not knowing anything about it but because I loved The General's Daughter and Plum Island and his literary style. First a coworker borrowed it but returned it unread because he could not get "into" it. I wondered just what I had waiting and soon discovered Viet Nam - a country, a war, a culture and a people that I really never paid much attention to as the war was occurring - a disgraceful admission. As DeMille led me through Viet Nam - Up Country- from South to North, the geographical names of the places jumped off the page; the specific war locales as well; the horrors unfortunately; and the immense loss of life.
The plot was described in the first 2 chapters but the real action doesn't begin until well into the book but accelerates toward a dramatic conclusion. DeMille's wit still shone through this journey, albeit a tough one. Paul Brenner, the returning character from the General's Daughter and Susan Weber endure many trials and escapes intermingled with a budding romance to arrive at their final destination, Hanoi from Saigon. The only negative was the length; 250 pages too long.
Thank you Mr. DeMille for my long overdue history lesson. Am awaiting the movie version.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A MAN WHO WAS
Review: UP COUNTRY By Nelson Demille

I wasn't going to write a review on this book because it has enough reviews written now-some of them very good, but it does the best job of explaining the Vietnam War that I have ever read. Besides the plot is very good, with Paul Brenner back with us after THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER, an excellent book it's own right. In this book he is the same fearless, wiseass with an excellent personal code of honor. Of course he's involved with the army's Criminal Investigation Division, the CIA, Secret Service and the FBI and if that wasn't enough he starts feuding with the a Colonel Mang of the Vietnam Secret Police, and almost ends up in jail or worse, as soon as he gets back to south Vietnam before he starts up country to the north.

He met a very pretty young lady, Susan Weber by design as she was his contact, and she managed to stay with him from one end of Vietnam to the other. This was quite a trip; especially since Paul Brenner's CID mission was a very important 30-year-old murder and he know less about it than the CID or the CIA who monitored Paul for almost the almost the whole trip. This book is worth reading. In one of the reviews it was suggested that he wrote the UP COUNTRY as a catharsis for his tours it Vietnam War, this story could be easily be that. Mr. Nelson Demille writes a first-rate book with some first-class war history.

Roger Lee


<< 1 .. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 .. 35 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates