CLAYTON GRAY

Clayton Gray is an officer in U.S. Air Force Intelligence.

Technically, he is a retired officer as the first of the trilogy of events in his life starts out. Gray is just concluding his 20 years as first a pilot and then an intelligence officer, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He is a very happily married man, wedded to the still vibrant and beautiful and alluring Mary, and quite anxious for the two to start their next stage of life living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The year is 1970 and Gray will find that, for a while at least, his hopes of the simple life will have to wait for a while longer as 'ghosts' of his former career will come to haunt him over matters left unfinished in the jungles of South-East Asia.

Gray was one of the first to take part in the military action in Vietnam, initially as a bomber pilot but later working as boots on the ground in the Intelligence world. In his time in the streets of Saigon and more often in the steamy rain forest of areas no U.S. military man was officially in, like Cambodia and Laos, Gray had amassed an impressive cadre of informants and colleagues, as well as more than a few enemies.

In those days of fighting North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, Gray had had to work closely with the CIA, had made a couple of friendships there but had also met more than a few people with whom he would maintain a less than cordial relationship with. Being burned now and then tends to cause that. And now having to go back to that area working with one of the latter to help save some of the former, Gray is certain that trust is not something he will have much of.

As is common in a trilogy, the three books make up one long story but this one is a good one. Clayton Gray is a man I would have liked to have known and he and his wife Mary, herself not a novice to the Intelligence world, are a couple I would have enjoyed nights playing cards with. Good solid people.

And "good" and "solid" are words I easily use to describe the writing and the placing and the plotting of this series. The author did an excellent job putting me in the locales the characters visit and in the minds of those people as they revisit old haunts, remember past events, and try very hard to survive the present.

While the series comes to a good conclusion, I would not have minded following more of Gray's activities, if he had the insanity to again agree to leave retirement. For his and Mary's sake, it would be better if he didn't.