Full Dress Gray [Hardcover]

Lucian K. Truscott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 1998

From bestselling author Lucian Truscott comes the sequel to his classic Dress Gray -- a modern military epic that echoes the scandals that have made headlines for years -- and still do today. In the New York Times bestseller Dress Gray, Ry Slaight was a rebellious cadet who almost destroyed West Point when he exposed and solved the murder of a gay cadet in 1969. Now, nearly three decades later, Slaight's been promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy. It's cause for congratulation -- and the occasion for a new blockbuster. When a female cadet dies during parade, an autopsy establishes that she had sex with multiple partners the night before. Was she the victim of a gang rape? Was there a cadet orgy? Don't ask. Don't tell. And that's just for starters. Slaight has his hands full: adultery among the senior faculty, sexual harassment, and an off-post beating involving cadets and drugs, not to mention the conservative Congressman who wants West Point closed, convinced it's a den of iniquity. And when the Commandant of Cadets aligns himself with a faction that believes the military academy should produce stone killers rather than an officer corps with a conscience, Slaight finds himself up against the same problems that bedeviled him as a cadet. But where once he almost brought West Point to its knees, now he's the only man who can put it back on its feet, as Full Dress Gray marches inexorably toward a climactic courtroom battle torn straight from today's headlines.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Enigmatic customs, arcane rituals, seemingly archaic attitudes; the secrets that hide within the walls of the Army's prestigious West Point Academy hold tremendous intrigue for the civilian. So much happens to which we will never be privy. So what happens when you take the rigid military school, with its all-important decree of "Duty, honor, and country," and throw in a murder, conniving Congressmen, and perhaps a sex scandal or two? You end up with Lucian Truscott's complex mystery, Full Dress Gray, a compelling novel in which the twists and turns hang on the subtleties of military life.

Ry Slaight, the hero of Dress Gray, returns to West Point Academy 30 years older and quite a few ranks higher. As a lieutenant general--and the new superintendent--Slaight faces the challenge of running a new kind of military academy--one that includes a multiethnic and somewhat feminized body of cadets. On his first day in charge, a young woman collapses in a military parade. What is at first assumed to be a rather typical case of heatstroke, turns out to be a death from unknown causes. When it's discovered the cadet had sex with multiple men the night before her death, Slaight is challenged to find out exactly what's been going on at his academy.

This novel has it all--sex, politics, conspiracy. Truscott writes about military life with the authority of someone who has lived it. --Jenny Brown

From Publishers Weekly

It's been almost 20 years since Truscott's groundbreaking West Point novel Dress Gray, but his concern with honor, tradition and personal accountability are still alive in this solid sequel, which hands Rysam Slaight, now a Lieutenant General, a career crisis on his first day as West Point's new Superintendent. When female cadet Dorothy Hamner dies during parade, the initial diagnosis is heatstrokeAwhich plays right into the hands of West Point's Commander of Cadets, Brigadier General Jack Gibson, who has been masking his dislike of women in the military for years. It also affects Slaight personally: the dead cadet was a member of Company H-3, commanded by Slaight's daughter Jacey. When evidence surfaces that Dorothy was raped just hours before her death, and that she attended a party the night before she died with members of the Cadet Honor Committee, Jacey is immediately suspiciousAand angry at her boyfriend, Ash Prudhomme, who was at the party and never told her about it. Truscott deftly mixes the personal with the political and uses the investigation into Dorothy's death to confront various aspects of the military todayAfunding cuts, female cadets, drug use and conflicting notions of honor. The stakes are clear, and there is no doubt who the good guys are. If the novel has a flaw, it's that Gibson is more a cartoon villain than a worthy antagonist. This lapse is all the odder because Truscott perfectly depicts the head of the Honor Committee, Cadet Jerry Rose. He's the all-too-modern amoral weasel whom every reader wants to see court-martialed. If the same readers want to give Truscott a medal, this novel's as good a reason as any. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (June 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688159931
• ISBN-13: 978-0688159931
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,065,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Predictable and Polemical, September 29, 2000

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Full Dress Gray (Bookcassette(r) Edition) (Audio Cassette)

In Lucian Truscott's world, women are heroic and men are weak and flawed (except our hero Ry Slaight and, interestingly, non-front-lines Army types like pathologists and lawyers). Men who oppose political correctness or question placing women in combat are, ipso facto, sexist/racist/homophobic hypocrites, and probably rapists and murderers too. No doubt it makes life easier to see things this way, but it doesn't leave room for a well-crafted novel. (For example, feel free to skip over Chapter 21 entirely. It's an anti-Republican screed that adds almost nothing to the storyline.)

Truscott's background and experience allow him to create a vivid atmospheric portrait of the federal academy setting. However, the statues on the Plain are more three-dimensional than the characters in this novel. For a responsible (non-fiction) balance to Truscott's political agenda, I recommend 'The Kinder, Gentler Military' by Stephanie Gutmann (Scribner, 2000).

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Full dress repeat., March 18, 2004

By 

M. Cuevas "stone_alpha" (Southwestern Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Full Dress Gray (Hardcover)

As a fan of Truscott's Dress Gray and a big backer of USMA, I was originally thrilled to see a sequel. That was as far as the thrill went... Truscott has taken Dress Gray and given it a completely unwelcome PC revamping. It's the same story... Slaight realizes there's something fishy and sexual about the death of a fellow cadet, and goes to fix it. The only difference is that this time around, young Cadet Slaight is female, as is the dead cadet. Read the first one. Forget that there is a sequel.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written. Where was the editor?, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Full Dress Gray (Bookcassette(r) Edition) (Audio Cassette)

Is the Sup a three or five year term? The author can't get that right within the space of a few pages.

Did Army play Washington or Washington State? Big difference.

What was that confusing time and distance sequence with the state patrol about?

I'm told there are many errors on the medicine.

Cartoon characters. Evil Republicans and patriotic Democrats. Including the President. Republicans engaged in sex crimes and lying about it. Sound familar?

Thank goodness the author is no longer in the Army. We would have lost the Gulf War if his sloppiness was at work in the real world.