Tree of Smoke — by Denis Johnson

First off, thank you to the reader who tipped me to this book, in a comment about how intelligence gets distorted as it passes up and down the chain of command.

No excerpts, I'm afraid, not because there aren't many to choose from but, rather, because this book's power (more than most I find compelling) stems more from its entirety than snippets can convey.

You'll just have to take my word for it, won't you?

But if that's not acceptable, not to worry — here's the first chapter.

The characters who wander in and out of the narrative, which centers on two remarkably complex and well-drawn, ill-fated CIA operatives who enter the Viet Nam theater in the early 60s and are both perpetrators and, in the end, victims of deception and treachery, are a motley crew indeed.

Some seem to have fallen out of "Catch-22" while others seem more products of a Philip K. Dick-like fever dream.

The frightening thing, though, is that no matter how horrific their actions, it seems quite evident that such things are not products of Johnson's imagination as much as portions of narrative he's been privileged — or sentenced – to record and transmit.