QL 4 by Jim Garrison

“‘The worst times to get killed are right after you get here and right before you leave.’ He rolled his eyes toward heaven. ‘And all the days in between.'”

PFC Bell, a newly-minted U.S. Army MP, quickly discovers that there’s more than a war going on along QL 4, the main road from Saigon into the Mekong Delta. It’s old-fashioned crime and corruption. He doesn’t want to get involved, just serve out his time and go home, but life for an American MP in Vietnam in 1970 doesn’t work that way. QL 4 leads Bell deep into a swamp of deception, mayhem, and death that insinuates its way both into towns the MPs patrol each day and into the old French villa where they live.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law as an in-house attorney with Texaco Inc. and its joint ventures until he was paid to go away in a corporate merger. Despite his wife’s expectation (and hope) that he would continue his legal career, he stayed home for the kids—in case they called from wherever they were—and decided to return to his first loves: literature and creative writing. After much study and research, he began work on his first novel, QL 4, based on his experiences as a military policeman in Vietnam, where he had ended up when he was drafted during his first year in law school. Set in the Mekong Delta in 1970, QL 4 is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, and crime among soldiers on the same side in an unpopular war. The title comes from the colonial highway that the American soldiers followed—in the footsteps of the French soldiers before them— south from Saigon into the Mekong Delta. QL 4 has won awards for literary and military fiction, and it was a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. Find out more about James here.