Rating: 
Summary: News to me
Review: As a Canadian heading to Vietnam for a month next Jan., I picked up this 700 page tome, hoping it would keep me busy during my week vacation in Jamaica. And indeed it did! DeMille can be funny as hell with his one-liners! The book is indeed more memoir than mystery, but I enjoyed it for that reason, as it provided some insight as to what my American neighbors of my age went through.If you're looking for pure thriller, you'll be disappointed. But if, like me, you want to learn a little about Vietnam today and the war in years past, this is an excellent read!
Rating: 
Summary: Demille Fan Let Down
Review: Having read all of Demille's prior work, I anticipated this book to be in the same style as the rest of his work. There is just not enough action in this book. The first 400 pages are wasted on boring scenery and history lessons for background purposes. The story just never picks up. The plot is very weak and then the story ends very abruptly. Read Lion's Game instead, great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Demille at his best; by the author of PRESSURE POINTS
Review: This book offers everything you want in a Demille book -- the bone-dry sarcastic wit, the quietly reluctant macho hero, the infuriating injustice, the corrupt bureaucrats, the hidden agenda, the heroic yet vulnerable journey, the tough broad. Some reviewers have said this book is 250 pages too long, and it's true that this story could have worked at 2/3 of its length. There are some length travelogue passages, too, that may try one's patience. But that's for the simple-minded, frankly. Because UP COUNTRY is about much more than its plot and even its characters. It is the quintessential theme book, a novel with a purpose much deeper than entertainment and a voice much more meaningful than style. This is Viet Nam as no movie has portrayed it, and as no book has tried to portray it. It is the Vietnam of the soldier's recurring nightmare, and it pulls no punches in bringing us the front-line infantry experience, all told in context to how that experience colored the lives of the men who survived it. Never before has the ludicrous agenda of that war, the utter confusion and frustration of it, been so clear. You gotta love Demille for delivering it with his trademark wit and an engaging story. This is why we read popular fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Don't read this book if you need plot closure
Review: I have read and enjoyed Nelson Demille's books and was looking forward to reading "Up Country". I finished it today and am disappointed. There is really two books here. One relating the experience of an American soldier in the Viet Nam war and the other an interesting plot about 2 Americans on a mission in the current day Viet Nam. The Viet Nam experiences grow old quickly. The adventures of the Americans in the present day Viet Nam is a good read EXCEPT at the end there is no closure. The book suddenly ends without telling the reader any of the outcomes. A book should have a beginning, a middle and an end. This one is missing the end.
Rating: 
Summary: DeMille getting soft and sloppy?
Review: I couldn't help thinking that the author was writing off a trip to Vietnam. I think DeMille is the best of the popular storytellers and some of his books--The Gold Coast and especially The Charm School--were riveting, but it seems that he's been phoning it in lately. This book is quite readable but the journey from premise to payoff is essentially a rambling travelogue, a predictable story with a highly unlikely girlfriend (surprisingly unreconciled with another romance back in the USA)and an ending that left me wondering if he ran out of paper. He still writes a lively, colorful chapter but he needs to get back to the quality of his earlier books. Also, some of his prose has a sloppy, first-draft sound.
Rating:
Summary: (3+5)/2=4+ Not up to his usual high standards
Review: Unfortunately I read DeMille's Spencerville first. Not his best work. Then I read Plum Island, Lion's Game, Charm School, and Cathedral -- all ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING. ...and that brings me to Up Country, where DeMille manages to be uneven in the same book. The first 60% of the book is an interesting travelogue/memoir with some weak but mildly engaging plot elements woven in. The last 40% or so is vintage DeMille, back on his game and hurtling the reader to another fantastic climax where he brings the threads together and gives us another satisfying (but ambiguous) ending. Hence a three plus a five equals a four +.
Rating:
Summary: Not the worst, but could be better
Review: This is not Mr. DeMille's best effort. In fact, it's one of his most middling, along with Plum Island and Lion's Game. If, by using Paul Brenner as the central character, Mr. DeMille wanted a sequel to The General's Daughter, he didn't write that type of tight, fast-paced story in Up Country.
The real problem, though, rests with his editor. This book is about 250 pages too long. The beginning is intriguing, but slumps badly for about 300 pages as Paul Brenner makes his way through Viet Nam re-visiting his past battle scenes. The writing is outstanding in these passages, painting descriptions of the country which result in vivid imagined scenes, but they have little or no contribution to the plot and could have easily been omitted. As one who spent a year in SEA, though, they brought back some memories.
His traveling companion, lover, translator, and confidant Susan Webster is the screen against which the travelogue is projected. Other than that, she's really obnoxious, irritating, and reminded me of why I no longer read Patricia Cornwell's books about Kay Scarpetta. The last quarter of the book picks up a bit, but the ending gives the reader the feeling that the author was just tired of writing and wanted to go on vacation. Bottom Line: Too bad Mr. DeMille didn't make the central story more of a "Fugitive" type of plot between Col. Mang and Mr. Brenner. If you want to read this book, get it at the library and take it to the beach or on a cruise. Cheers
Rating:
Summary: Superb Read!
Review: Here's why I enjoyed "Up Country" immensely:
1. Vietnam Theater Vet.
2. Travel is a passion for me, and Demille literally puts the reader in his shoes as he travels the towns and landscape of Vietnam.
3. First rate thriller.
4. Nelson DeMille.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, visceral, upsetting. Among DeMille's best
Review: The principal characters are all plausable and the arresting situations in which they are progressively entangled have a ring of freightening credibility. As the tension mounts and the mystery develops, the reader is sucked into an increasingly disquieting vortex leading to a chilling climax that hit me like an unexpected punch to the solar plexus, and I gasped out loud. It made me recall my suspicians that the sudden demise of former CIA Director William Casey, publicly attributed to a brain anurism while he was hospitalized at Bethesda Naval Hospital, seemed just too convenient at a time when all the Iran contra activities that occurred on his watch were under intense congressional scrutiny. The progressively heavier ethical wartime and geopolitical quandries DeMille presents to his protagonists (and readers) was enervating. Unlike some reviewers, I found the ending quite satisfactory. And it'll be a much better film than was The General's Daughter!
Rating: 
Summary: Not Demille's Best
Review: I love Demille's books, but this just wasn't one of his best. Wouldn't recommend to anyone but Viet Nam Vets or children of same.
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