All posts by Juris Jurjevics
Times of London Thriller of the Month
Times of London Historical Fiction Pick
“One of the most gripping thrillers of the year.”
New York Times review: “Brace yourself.”
Booklist review
Starred review in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly calls Play the Red Queen “a tour-de-force that will make fans of Martin Limón and James Benn sorry that there will be no more from this gifted writer, who died in 2018.” Full review here.
Victims and victors
Both “Red Flags” and “Play the Red Queen” are mysteries about murders that take place in the midst of war. Juris was well aware of the paradox: “Because really what war is is this lawless state. For all the talk about the laws of war, the only law there is is your right to kill somebody legally and your right to survive. Almost everything seems permissible under that heading. Everything is unleashed once a state of war comes into being.” He also knew what having lived in that lawless state meant for returning veterans: “The elevation of such aggression and violence with pomp and admiration is what I find so odd. We honor them perhaps to make ourselves less guilty about what they’ve done for us in sacrificing themselves to the consequences of their acts. Maybe truly honoring them might be accepting that war makes wrecks of its victims and victors.”
Hoarding books in Viet Nam
“The war has reverted back to dull drudgery and I’m back to my magazines, histories, mysteries, novels. Alas, my sabbatical hasn’t done much for my intellect except allowed me to become well versed in bad books. I don’t think I’ve ever read so much in my life as here. Not much left in our little library that I haven’t hit. We just got a couple more boxes of books in today courtesy of the Red Cross. Every two months like clockwork. I have quite a collection of titles hoarded. Pretty soon I’ll have to move my clothes out and sleep on the floor to make room for them all.”
Gangrene dollars
At the heart of both “Red Flags” and “Play the Red Queen” is Juris’s desire to expose the corrupting effect of American aid, both military and civilian, on Viet Nam. “You’re in there spending billions building tremendous airfields, tremendous camps, bringing in economic aid in the millions and millions, basically taking over the country, crushing their economy with the influx of your — the French called them ‘gangrene dollars’ – you just wipe out their economy so they’re totally dependent on you. Once we were in on that scale, the game was over. So this enormous cornucopia comes landing in Viet Nam, and the Vietnamese elites scramble to control it and grab it and use it and extort it. President Thieu left Viet Nam with something like 35,000 pounds of luggage. What do you think that was? Furniture?”
