by Robert Stone
First published 1975
John Converse sits in a Saigon bar, sweating through another humid night as the Vietnam War collapses around him. The journalist has made a deal that will either save him or destroy him. He arranges to smuggle three kilograms of pure heroin back to California, where his wife Marge waits in their Berkeley home. But when the drugs arrive, everything goes wrong. Ray Hicks, the ex-Marine courier Converse trusted, finds himself running through the California mountains with both the heroin and Marge, pursued by corrupt federal agents who want the drugs for themselves. What started as a scheme to escape the moral wasteland of Vietnam becomes a nightmare chase across the American landscape. Converse discovers that the rot he fled in Southeast Asia has followed him home, and that survival demands choices no decent person should have to make.
Genres: american-fiction, adventure, crime, action
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: chase, enemies-to-lovers, moral-ambiguity
Setting: Saigon, California, Berkeley
Period: Vietnam War
350 pages · Hardcover · Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.
Content warnings: drug-use, violence