The Quick and the Dead: A Novel

by Randy Lee Eickhoff

Overview

Vietnam, 1966. Benjamin Wingfoot is the leader of a Special Operations Group stationed deep upcountry. He's taken on plenty of dangerous missions, but something about his latest assignment doesn't sit well with him. Summoned back to Saigon, "Wingo" is ordered to kill a local bar girl suspected of spying for the North--and make it look like the routine murder of a prostitute.
Right away, he suspects that there is more to this mission than he is being told. War may be hell, but, as Wingo struggles to uncover the truth amidst the corruption of wartime Saigon, he soon learns that even darker trials await him--and that the price of holding onto his soul may be more than any one man can endure . . . .



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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466838697
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	961 KB

About the Author

RANDY LEE EICKHOFF is one of only three veterans from a specially-trained unit of twenty-seven to return from the Vietnam War. He spent the first six months of the war with the Montagnards in the Vietnamese highlands, parachuting in with his team on special missions. After leaving the army Eickhoff immersed himself in scholarly pursuits, specializing in languages, including Ancient Greek and Gaelic.

Randy Lee Eickhoff holds several graduate degrees, including a Ph.D. in Classics. He lives in El Paso, Texas where he works on novels, plays, poetry and translations in several languages. His translation of Ireland's national epic, the Ulster Cycle, is now a text used in schools in the United States and overseas. His novel And Not to Yield, based on the life of Wild Bill Hickok, was selected as the Best Novel of 2004 by the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage. His nonfiction work on the Tigua Indians, Exiled, won the Southwest Book Award. He is also the author of Return to Ithaca, Then Came Christmas and The Quick and the Dead. He has been inducted into the Paso Del Norte Writers Hall of Fame, the local chapter of the Texas Institute of Arts and Letters. Eickhoff served with distinction in the early phases of the Vietnam War, and was awarded the Purple Heart, Silver Star and Bronze Star. He spends his time in El Paso, Ireland, and Italy, lecturing on Dante and The Ulster Cycle.

Editorial Reviews

"A riveting tale of brutal warfare amidst a deep and compelling spiritual journey. "

New York Times bestselling author of Operation Iraqi Freedom - Col. Walter J. Boyne (USAF

"Gives the reader the real Vietnam War. This story is grim, uncompromising, and at times cruel, but with a real sense of humanity."

Edgar Award-Winning of Death of a Thousand Cuts - Barbara D'Amato

"A riveting tale of brutal warfare amidst a deep and compelling spiritual journey. Anyone who fought in Vietnam will recognize this as the real thing; anyone who didn't fight there should read this to see how it was."—Col Walter J. Boyne (USAF, ret.), New York Times bestselling author of Operation Iraqi Freedom on The Quick and the Dead

"The Quick and the Dead gives the reader the real Vietnam War. This story is grim, uncompromising, and at times cruel, but with a real sense of humanity."—-Barbara D'Amato, Edgar Award-Winning of Death of a Thousand Cuts on The Quick and the Dead

"This is one of the most powerful novels written about the men who went away to fight America's most hated war and who could not return home again . . . it brings the war into your mind and heart and allows you to sense the despair, the danger, the betrayals, the senseless horrors. You'll understand . . . what happened to these men and what they gave up for their country. Each narrative passage is written with the passion and credibility that only one who has been there and finally found his way home again, can feel."—The Tulsa World on Return to Ithaca

"Both the landscape and the emotional atmosphere of Vietnam are powerfully portrayed."

—Publishers Weekly on Return to Ithaca

From the Publisher