Customer Reviews

The Blue Deep

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Something that I feel professional reviewers have missed is Layne Heath's ability to give a dream-like atmosphere to his fiction, even when his prose is precise, vigorous, and realistic--even naturalistic, in fact. This atmosphere seems to be more fit to the portrayl of the absurdity of war, than more realistic and historical approaches. His endings, here as well as in *CW2*, plunge the protagonist's personal search or departure from humanity (as in *CW2*) right into the imponderable. In keeping up with Heath's approach, *The Blue Deep* is full of loony, eccentric characters--as the French drunk who shots the protagonist Cody West every time he drops by to court his daughter, a beautiful half-bred Vietnamese nurse called Moni; or as the former American ambassador who, as war in Vietnam seems to be the only option for the US in the near future, dedicates himself to gardening. Even thought they seem to be not-fully characterised, characters have in this novel a honesty of their own. The love of flying is also a palpable element in the story, and Heath's description of flights and air combat are superb. His language is always effective, crisp, never stilted or pretentious. Another point of interest is that Heath's metaphors are frequently played out in the characters' lives, and he always reaches them with surehand and respect for the reader. In this case, the strongest metaphor to come into fruition this way is that of the best men--those who are there really to do their jobs--being set to be slaughtered in a dog-fight pit (in the Hanoi club that gives the book its title), while around them greedy [punks] literaly make money out of their blood. The novel's concerns become more interesting and significant in the lights of the recent US invasion of Iraq and the accusations of government favouring of particular firms and persons, in the handling of reconstruction resources.