Pretty good police mystery from the point of view of inside the US Army and the CID investigating the murder and apparent rape of a Georgia Army base commander's daughter.

Another great one by deMille. Now I have to reread the Corey novel that brought Brenner and Sunhill back, not that that's a bad thing. ( )

First edition fine, remainder mark

This book had a lot of humor mixed in with a lot of serious sadness. The humor was mostly in the interaction between characters, and didn't really detract too much from the serious parts, in my opinion.

I thought the two main characters investigating the crime made a great couple. They did a good job handling a lot of difficult situations, and worked well together. ( )

"As a CID warrant officer, Brenner had to play many roles. "I was a cook and a chemical weapons officer, which, in the army, are the same thing." That sets the tone for this book. I had seen the movie with John Travolta, who did a great job, and this is one of those rarities where the movie and book complement each other very well. The movie captures the spirit of the book.

It's rare that I give a novel 5 stars. I usually reserve that many for important works of non-fiction. I make an exception for this novel. Aside from Brenner's wise-cracking, always enjoyable, the book has an intriguing mystery, a thorough investigation, lots of suspects, and even a bit of romance.

This is one of those books which some of the more puritanical among us will complain is unnecessarily graphic. I disagree. The novel is about honor, disgrace, writing past wrongs, a whole panoply of emotional responses and how they affect us. The scenes are incredibly uncomfortable and necessarily so because they pull the reader into the moral quagmire faced by the participants.

I listened to it as an audiobook read by Scott brick who is the perfect narrator for this title. ( )