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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Revenge is best served cold... and beware of the server., May 4, 2010
This review is from: Six Graves to Munich (Paperback)
Never heard about this book. Ever. First published in 1967; five years before I drew my first breath. Forty-four years later, the words have not lost their effect. 2,294 weeks later the impotent helplessness can still be felt. 16,060 days later and the need for revenge, still unsated. 385,440 hours later and the torturous hauntings of the Munich Palace of Justice are still causing nightmares.
Michael Rogan has been raked through hell and has lived to tell about it. Unfortunately, just because you make it through hell doesn't mean that is a good thing. Michael has scars and not all of them are on the outside of his body. We also learn, in raw-nerve clarity, that time does not heal all wounds. Michael has a number of special gifts and chooses to use these gifts to help the United States win the war. His work is extraordinary but in his carelessness he does get caught. And in a page right out the `Terrorist Book for Cowards', the Germans not only torture him... but his wife as well. Wait... his pregnant wife. Excruciating pain doesn't even begin to describe what Michael's despair as he heard his wife being tortured in the next room...
Adding that mind-numbing horror to the aberrant violence already visited on him is the perfect fuel to his fire. He goes on a revenge killing spree with the bloody precision of an assassin. What I truly liked about this story was how undeterred Michael was. Sometimes violence IS the answer and sometimes you must repay blood with blood. Mario Puzo tells a story of violence with severity, fury, and force. And as I said earlier, all of Michael's pain isn't on the surface; the same can be said for this story. Oh the perpetrators leave their share of blood, but the one question I have for Michael is, "what kind of pain must you be in to mete out THAT kind of punishment"?
Despite Mario's celebrated bibliography, this is the only book I've read by him. But what a one it was.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Revenge, June 30, 2010
This review is from: Six Graves to Munich (Paperback)
Mario Puzo wrote this novel in 1967 using a nom de plume following publication of two books which had received critical notice but few sales, and two years before the hugely successful "Godfather." Little attention was paid to it and it quickly went out of print until it was found by his Polish publisher and has now been brought out in paperback.
Certainly no blockbuster, but definitely a workmanlike effort telling the story of a young man serving as a clandestine intelligence agent near Paris who is captured by the Gestapo on D-Day when transmitting on a secret radio. Taken to Munich with his pregnant wife, he is tortured and interrogated by seven men in an effort to get him to reveal the allies' secret codes. Ultimately, they shoot him and believe he is dead.
However, he survives, is treated in VA hospitals, and to some extent recovers. Eventually making a substantial amount of money in the computer industry, he embarks on a journey to exact revenge for what was done to him and his wife. This is the story of how he tracks down his tormentors and his plan to kill them.
Recommended.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Non-stop, action packed... relatively not enjoyable., October 14, 2011
To get this out of the way, I'll first admit my disability to put the book down. It is just over 200 pages and it is brilliantly paced. This, primarily, is the reason I grant the short story a three star rating. Many revenge tales give you something to like about the anti-hero. With Rogan, I found no redeeming quality to grasp on to. Revenge, in this novel, was anything but bitter-sweet. It was painful, merciless, and pitiful. I hopelessly grasped for healing, but it was seldom found. Chapter 12, however, stood magnificently above the rest. This alone was worth reading the rest of the shallow plot. If you can find it for cheap, pick it up, blast through, then collect your thoughts about it. Perhaps you'll find more meaningful bits behind the plot than I did.
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