Sweepers (Mass Market Paperback)

by P. T. Deutermann (Author) "Marcus Galantz tilted his head back, pushed his nose above the surface of the water, and took a silent breath..." (more)
Key Phrases: forensic ambiguities, hedge passage, recon school, Admiral Sherman, Admiral Carpenter, Commander Lawrence (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
People who are important to Admiral Tag Sherman are dying under mysterious circumstances, leaving him large amounts of money. When a homicide detective starts asking embarrassing questions, Naval Commander Karen Lawrence is asked to investigate. Sherman suspects that he is being set up by an old enemy, a man he left behind in the swamps of Vietnam, formally MIA but really one of the nastiest of the rogue CIA "sweepers"?killers whose job is to get rid of other killers. Lawrence's investigation is complicated by naval politics, and just when she thinks she understands what's going on, yet another layer of treachery is revealed. What the book lacks in clarity it makes up for in suspense, danger, and a disturbing vision of the CIA run amok. Deutermann (Official Privilege, St. Martin's, 1995) has written a fine page-turner for popular collections.?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Iowa
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
A skeleton from the Vietnam closet upsets the career ascent of several posterior-covering admirals. The skeleton is a secret assassin named Galantz, sore at being abandoned in the Mekong Delta by a navy lieutenant. Now an admiral, Tag Sherman becomes the object of the assassin's vengeance. Two naval people, male and female, investigate the case, which arises when two of Sherman's friends die suddenly. Sherman blames that old assassin, a point debated continuously by the investigators. But readers, through the magic of authorial omniscience, eavesdrop on Sherman's superiors in the Pentagon and discover that Sherman is probably truthful; but "those people up the river" (the CIA) have lost control of their assassin. However, those people have deep-cover "sweepers" who clean up such embarrassments, creating the action of an unknown sweeper chasing the investigators who are chasing Galantz. Despite their scrapes with danger, the investigators are flat characters, leaving plausible portrayals of Pentagon office politics as this mystery's primary asset. Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks (August 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312964471
• ISBN-13: 978-0312964474
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #268,761 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping Thriller Keeps You Wondering, July 5, 2000

By	P. Connors "Colonialpara" (United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The novel begins with what appears to be a routine police investigation into what may or not be an accidental death. A beautiful woman is dead and her former boyfriend, a frocked Rear Admiral (lower half)assigned to the navy staff at the Pentagon may or may not be a suspect.

The young admiral, who had served in Vietnam years before as the skipper of a Swift boat plying the tributaries of the Mekong River has something of a past. His marriage ended in divorce like so many other military marriages. His only son, a real dirtbag and loser hates him and wants revenge. So does the ex-Navy SEAL who feels that young Lieutenant Sherman left him for dead so many years before.

As the case gets murkier, an old friend and mentor of RADM Sherman dies of a heart attack. Is it really a heart attack or a well disguised murder which hints at further retribution?

The Navy and local police get involved and the Judge Advocate General of the Navy (the JAG) also gets involved by assigning a female lawyer on the verge of retirement and an NIS (Naval Investigative Service) agent to the case. Things become very complicated very quickly and more than just Admiral Sherman begin to find themselves in jeopardy and facing real risks.

Since his first novel, SCORPION IN THE SEA, Peter Deutermann has only improved as a writer and storyteller. His former career as a Surface Warfare Officer, Arms Negotiator and Senior Staff Officer provided him with both an excellent background and volumes of material from which to draw his stories. He writes very well and provides his readers with all of the information necessary to understand the arcane ways in which the operational and staff sides of the Navy work on a day-to-day basis. He also fully develops his characters. While he doesn't do so too quickly, he provides just enough information on each of them to keep the reader wondering just what else he has in store for them. He also lets the reader hang just long enough until he drops the next vital piece of info. It is my opinion that Peter Deutermann has become a master of pacing and tension building and he has done much to create his own sub-genre in the larger arena of military and techno-thrillers. Call it the naval mystery if you will but understand that this specialized type of fiction belongs to Deutermann and Deutermann alone.

I heartily recommend this book and all of the others by this fine writer. His other books are NOT part of a series so it does not matter what order you read them in. If you like(ed) SWEEPERS then try OFFICIAL PRIVILEGE; it's where Captain Deutermann segued off and started writing naval mysteries.

His other books are all excellent, too and will provide many hours of suspenseful but enjoyable reading. I hope he continues to write for years to come. BZ Captain Deutermann! Thank you for many hours of reading enjoyment.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sweepers sweeps along, June 8, 2003

By	David W. Nicholas (Montrose, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

P.T. Deutermann has been writing Naval books like this for a while now. His genre has wound up being a book-length version of the TV show JAG. That means (for those of you who haven't seen the show) a cross between Tom Clancy and John Grisham. The setting is more Clancy, the plot more Grisham.

In this instance, a newly-promoted Admiral in the Navy is briefly a suspect in the murder of his ex-girlfriend. Her death was originally thought an accident, and only anomalies in the crime scene made the police suspicious. Because of the police suspicions, a female Commander in the Navy who's an investigator for JAG is assigned to liase with the police, and watch over the investigation to make sure that there aren't any scandals brewing (the book is set in the mid-90s, with Tailhook, Boorda's suicide, and various other scandals looming large in the rearview mirror). She's assigned a partner, a new civilian investigator from the Naval Investigative Service named "Train" von Rensel. They quickly ascertain that the villain of the piece is a Navy Seal that the Admiral abandoned one night in Viet Nam. The guy has been listed as MIA ever since, and apparently working for the CIA as a "sweeper", an assassin who kills other assassins who get out of line.

I had some problems with the book. The plot seems to plod along for the first half of the book, or so. It's 400+ pages and feels as if a hundred could have been deleted without much pain. The two main characters, Train and the girl, are a bit dull and uninspired in their attempts to unravel the circumstances of the original incident in Viet Nam, and the plot there contains a twist that was more than a bit of a coincidence and not particularly believable to me. Also I too had problems with the portrayal of the main bad guy, the Seal. While I have no difficulty imagining one of these guys turning into a criminal, I do get impatient with them being portrayed as undefeatable. In this instance, he's that throughout the book until the very end, when someone finally manages to momentarily surprise him, once. He does all of the super secret Ninja stuff, walk through walls, pick locks without it being apparent he did so, kill people and make it look like an accident, etc. It's a bit much.

Anyway, I still enjoyed the book at some level, and if you're into this sort of thing, I would recommend it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This man's writing is excellent...a seamless work!, September 19, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Sweepers (Bookcassette(r) Edition) (Audio Cassette)

The bad folks are truly evil and the heroes are terrific in the most literately done novel I've read since I can remember!

P.T. Deutermann, Captain, USN, retired, goes considerably further than the other top writer involved in military detail in that his characters come alive and his specific events leave you pretty much "ridden hard and put away wet". He makes convoluted plots easily understandable and his use of plain English is wonderful.

When a young gunboat skipper, "in-country" in the waterways of Vietnam, leaves a U S Navy SEAL stranded as the result of a tad too much unfriendly fire he creates his worst nightmare. The SEAL becomes known as a MIA...then pops up years later to exact some serious payback from the now newly promoted admiral that left him in the water and weeds of the Vietnamese jungle