Customer Reviews

Keeping Watch

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I started out reading the Mary Russel novels of Laurie King and then progressed to Kate Matinelli. I read Keeping Watch before Justice Hall. This is new ground for the author but very fertile territory. It is hard to put a label on this book (i.e., mystery, fiction). It has substantive action and totally believable dialogue, no make believe like her other titles, which are very good. There is a craftsman-like leitmotif weaving of sub-plots and topics here, all obviously well-researched. King's titles all seem to have an accurate sense of history and geography and this is no exception. Its messages are real. It was eye-opening to me about children's advocacy issues and how victims repress and feel powerful emotions simultaneously. It was startling in its portrayal of the horrors of war (Vietnam). And it was powerful in depicting the depression of the protagonist and his struggle to achieve stability. It was moralistic, with good conquering evil.
The battle was never an easy one though and the author leads the reader to explore commitment, involvement, care and instruction of children, and loyalty to family and friends among other issues. Its relationships between men and women are on solid footing, too, as women are portrayed as role models in difficult situations. Not perfect types, but very human, with defined needs and depth of character who bring much to their associations. This is not just a good read. It is terrific. King won an Edgar Prize a few years ago for best mystery by a new writer. I don't know again if this qualifies as a mystery. If it does, it will compete for another Edgar as Best Mystery of the Year. Also, it makes King an attractive candidate for a Lifetime Achievement Edgar. She writes with the literacy of a Susan George. This book reminds me of Cold Mountain in many ways, too. It will compete for lots of awards. It is a serious novel by an author just finding her prime. I recommend it enthusiastically. I do caution readers that this book is candid about psychological hurt and physical pain. Not everyone will want to finish reading it.

I'm not going to review this novel - others have already done so. Some folks thought it was too long, others didn't care for the Vietnam introduction. But I was there - Vietnam in 1970/71 - and can attest from personal experience that Ms. King captures the heat, the sensations, the fear...and the Green to perfection. And the intro is vital to understanding the demons that drive Allen Carmichael.

So, even if you think you don't like 'war stories', stick with it...please! You'll be rewarded with a fascinating character study and a complex psychological thriller.

You may also come to understand why so many of those who fought in Vietnam took years to put the pieces of their life together (and why some never could) and how Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi 'incidents' occur 30 years later.

Ms. King continues to amaze and challenge. . .

When, on page 10 I suddenly found myself deep inside the war in Vietnam, a continent away from the suspense novel I thought I'd just sat down to read, I grew wary, thumbed ahead, found 86 pages of description of what it was like to be a Marine in Vietnam ahead of me and almost threw the book across the room. If there'd been anything good on TV I might have. I put the book aside several times, finally just decided to plug away at it and I'm so glad I did. By the time the story finally left Vietnam I found I wouldn't have minded staying longer. But finally the plot kicks in and a riveting one it is, too. Allen Carmichael, whom King readers met previously as Rae's lover in "Folly" (another terrific read), stars in this one and by midway through his story you begin to realize why that long author's detour through 'Nam was necessary. Allen has come to the end of a long and dangerous career as a man who kidnaps abused children (and sometimes their mothers along with them) and finds them sanctuary. Here he's about to embark on his last case, where nothing is quite what it seems. What a joy and relief to find my favorite mystery/suspense writer in top form again after the disappointing "Justice Hall." King fans, I think you're going to really really like this one.

I have always been a fan of both Laurie King's series, finding them complex and entertaining. This newest novel, Keeping Watch, is by far the best she has written. Allen Carmichael came back from a tour in Vietnam wounded in both body and soul in the late 60's when no one had ever heard of post-traumatic stress disorder to a country and family who had no idea what had happened to all the young men shipped off to a hellish, senseless war. Haunted by nightmares and flashbacks of both the things he had seen and had done, he sinks into several years of homeless wandering until he ends up back at his childhood home. In the care of his young brother Jerry, he begins to heal and seek his purpose in life. He finds it in rescuing children from the hands of abusive fathers and putting them into an underground network of families willing to foster them to adulthood. After 26 years he takes one final case before retiring to his beloved island home,that of rescuing 12 year old Jamie O'Connell from his monstrous father. Jamie both hates and loves his father, as many abused children do, but knows that his father will kill him eventually. When Jamie is safely placed in Montana, Allen thinks that he can peacefully retire until a plane registered to Jamie's father crashes,but no remains are found. There are many twists and turns before a final resolution to both Jamie's story and Allen's.

This is an absolutely harrowing novel, but one that can't be put down. I was especially stunned by the considerable portions telling of Allen's Vietnam experience. Being of the Vietnam generation, I saw many of my friends be shipped off-some to return and some not. It amazes me that any of them came back sane. Laurie King's telling of Allen's story is a triumph of her imagination and narrative powers.

KEEPING WATCH is a remarkable achievement. Laurie King intertwines a first-rate story of war in Vietnam with a contemporary suspense story about rescuing a twelve-year old from his abusive father. Both stories gain harmonic richness from their conjunction. This reader was utterly enmeshed in the complexity of thier gradual unfolding.

Allen Carmichael returns from Vietnam haunted by terrible memories and nightmares. After seven years of wandering in a wilerness of alcohol, memory gaps, and petty crime he rurns home to Washinton's San Juan Islands to begin reconstructing himself. He spends the next two decades rescuing abused women and children for an underground network run by a woman named Alice. He has finally decided to retire and marry his lover, Rae Newborn (central figure of King's last novel FOLLY), but Alice persuades him to take one last case. It turns out to be the most challenging in his career, threatening the network and the lives of Allen and Jamie -- the boy he is trying to save.

King has never written a book with a male protagonist before. The most vivd sections of the book are Carmichael's flashbacks of Vietnam. King credits "the stories" of Vietnam vets in helping her accomplish this feat. It is a measure of King's skill that those scenes have the flavor of first-hand observation. The suspense story has enough twists and turns to satisfy the most jaded mystery reader.
Highly recommended.

I'm a big fan of Laurie R. King's "Kate Martinelli" series; and bought this book to see what else she can write. I'd not read "Folly" (although I plan to) and I found that you can treat this book about sometimes-hero Allen Carmichael as a stand alone read. And what a read!

King, through a series of writing and conversations, and, I believe, a voyage to the jungles (the "green") of Viet Nam, manages to evoke the presence of her ex-GI, Allen, and recreate the war there. Flashbacks syncopate the story of today's Allen, locked in a battle with an angry, violent father over possession of his abused, 12-year old son. Allen's part of a network of a type of "underground railroad" for abused children. His destiny is tied up in his memories of rage and terror from his days in Vietnam, and what's worse, his return to "civilization", as a despised Vietnam vet. King has gotten into the deepest visceral memories of the soldiers who served there, and the analogy between Allen's former battles and his current urban battles gives the reader a strong link to his motivation.

"Six months of rage and shame flooded up through...his gut and seized his heart and his mind; six months of confusion and hatred and humiliation, long weeks of gut-shrinking terror and soul-withering frustrtion slammed together in the cleansing red emotion of savagery given a clear target".

....what terrors Allen has faced then and now are interspersed with the third/first person account of Jamie, a boy shattered by his sensitivity and knowledge of the emotional cripple that is his father. You'll be caught up in the tense thrill of today's story, and reluctantly moved back to the jungles to see the paradox of Jamie's struggles and Allen's own.

A book you won't soon forget -- the evocative "Keeping Watch" - bravo for Laurie R. King!

Allen Carmichael was a second-tier character in Laurie King's delightful novel Folly, the story of internationally-renowned woodworker Rae Newborn's attempt to tighten her tenuous hold on reality by building a house on an uninhabited island in Washington State. In Keeping Watch, Allen's character and history are fully fleshed out, from the experiences in Vietnam that ineradicably imprinted themselves on him, to the mission he undertook after the War as a means of quelling his demons: Allen has spent more than 25 years applying his jungle survival skills to the task of rescuing abused children and wives from their abusers, usually by illicit means. When the action of Keeping Watch begins, Allen is in his mid-fifties and is about to retire from the field, but one final case requires his attention first: twelve-year-old Jamie O'Connell lives in terror of his father, whose casual abuse and cruel manipulations have warped the boy beyond measure.

King's exploration of Allen's character is wholly successful, and her depiction of his patrols in the "green" in Vietnam riveting. The contemporary story of Jamie's rescue is equally rewarding, indeed downright engrossing after about page 240, when of a sudden one stops knowing for certain who the bad guys are. Keeping Watch is at least as good as King's novel Folly. Familiarity with the earlier book is not at all necessary, but readers of Keeping Watch will almost certainly want to treat themselves to a broader view of the universe Allen Carmichael inhabits once they've finished with King's latest.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Laurie King has gained herself an enthusiastic new fan. If all of her books are as well crafted as KEEPING WATCH, I'll be digging through library shelves to find every one.

To start, Ms. King gives us a glimpse into Vietnam veteran Allen Carmichael's life now, then takes us deep into his past to show us what formed the man he has become. The tour of duty the naïve young student signed on for in 1967 changed nearly everything about him. Most of the first 90 pages are devoted to the business of war and the shaping of a soldier, Allen Carmichael in particular. Putting aside my personal feelings about war --- and that war in particular --- I found myself fascinated by the sights, sounds, smells and emotions Ms. King's descriptions evoked. The jungle grew to life on her pages and her hero, questionable though he sometimes might be, was catapulted from a patriotic college kid into an adult with keen abilities no parent wants their child to possess, let alone sharpen. But that's how Allen survived.

Once back Stateside, he tried to fit into a society that held wildly divergent views on its Vietnam veterans. As we know, their homecoming wasn't the grand welcome of a country's bravest and most devoted citizens. In the year he'd been gone, much had changed --- a lot of it inside himself. So when he tried to pick up where he had left off --- with college, with women, with career plans --- he struggled to find relevance in his choices. What Allen finally fell into, while admittedly illegal, was nonetheless noble and had the added benefit of helping him make amends for the horror that was Vietnam.

Allen Carmichael rescues abused women and children. He spent two and a half decades building a network of sensors, helpers, facilitators and foster homes, learning how to gather evidence and when to bring the authorities into the case. Now the time has come for him to retire. His last rescue, that of 12-year-old Jameson Patrick O'Connell, should have been routine. However, it's anything but. He watches Jameson (Jamie) at home, researches his father --- a widower who is quite well off --- and gets a feel for Jamie among his classmates. What Allen sees of Jamie's relationship with his father pushes him to a hasty acceleration of his normal timetable.

Jamie's new life starts out smoothly enough, but then Allen receives a letter from the foster family, which makes the hairs on his neck stand on end. The prickles of doubt send him scurrying to retrace his steps and dig deeper into the O'Connell family background. In the course of his second investigation, he finds that things aren't what they at first appeared. Now, he has to decide whether he has misjudged young Jamie and how the father really fits into the picture. When the elder O'Connell's plane goes missing, Allen wrenches Jamie from his new life and tries to fit the pieces of the puzzle into a sensible scenario. It is relentless action from that point on.

This is a sobering look at abuse --- psychological and physical --- and a quick peek at an ill-managed war. Today, while we are in the midst of another military conflict with less-than-worldwide support, KEEPING WATCH seems particularly timely. It gives us insights into the soldier's world that, hopefully, will help us understand and honor our troops as they come home. More importantly, maybe it will give us a heightened sense of the damage any type of abuse inflicts on people --- children especially --- and help us stamp it out before it ruins more lives. Of course, while gaining these valuable insights, we're treated to an excellent read. Just excellent.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

He was in his first year of college when the patriotic spirit moved Allen Carmichael to enlist in the army, knowing that he would send time in Viet Nam. While serving in Nam, he saw and did things to people that made him doubt his own humanity. When he left service Allen suffered flashbacks leading to staying alone and homeless for fear what he would to anyone who got close to him. After seven years, he finally gets his act together.

For the next twenty-six years he has rescued (or kidnapped, depending on your point of view) children in abusive situations. Allen is proud of the fact that fifty-two children are alive because of his intervention but now he plans to retire and make a life with his lover Rae. He's asked to go out on one more assignment and he reluctantly agrees to snatch Jamie O'Connell, from his sadistic father. This is his last case but it turns out to be very dangerous because nobody knew that Jamie's father takes his violence out on anybody who gets in his way.

The hero saw and committed a lot of atrocities during the Viet Nam war and has spent the rest of his life seeking redemption. To achieve this impossible salvation, Allen saves children even if it means stepping outside the law to accomplish his deed. KEEPING WATCH is a masterpiece of psychological suspense wrapped inside a taut action thriller.

Harriet Klausner

If I were as good a writer as Laurie King, I would have the right words at my fingertips to do this novel justice. The book is still resonating in my mind a week after I finished reading it. The book is really two-in-one, and neither is easy to swallow. The images of Vietnam are not new to me, but they were told in a way that put me there, and I was as glad as Allen to leave the country. The second part is about redemption -- how to save yourself through the search for it, and the final accomplishment. Many of my generation treated the returning vets in deplorable ways. I would hope that this book would remind them. It was a no-win situation for everyone. To read of someone who managed to overcome his demons, and the way it which he did it, was fascinating. One reviewer said for a reader to stick with it. I second this and add that the rewards will astound you. We do not pay enough attention to the abuse of children. I believe that we all MUST be our brother's keeper. Great book, Laurie King.