Tin Soldiers by David Chadwick
| Tin Soldiers by David Chadwick | |
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| Category: Thrillers | |
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Reviewer: Jill Murphy
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| Summary: A political mystery thriller with great pace, an engaging central character, and intelligent analysis of Nixon's America. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 376 | Date: June 2023 |
| Publisher: Matador | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1803136387 | |
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Wat Tyler has returned from fighting in Vietnam under something of a cloud. What actually happened out there is gossiped about and nobody is sure exactly what took place, but an act of heroism leading to a rare battlefield commission followed by rank cowardice and disgrace seems to be the consensus. Wat himself is keeping his cards close to his chest, as he always does.
Wat resumes his previous career as a crime reporter in New York. But he also joins the National Guard as a part-time volunteer, much to the disgust of the sergeant in Manhattan's Fighting 55th. And he's due to give some lectures in journalism at Ramskill University - where the National Guards of the 55th had recently shot and killed three civilians at an anti-war protest. Wat's first newspaper assignment is to investigate the killings.
It soon becomes clear that there is much more to the case than some panicked guardsmen shooting wildly into unruly crowds and there are powerful interests at work. Together with prosecutor JoBeth Medlock, Wat investigates the links between the campus killings and the subsequent murders of three scientists rumoured to have been using Vietnam veterans as lab rats.
Tin Soldiers is a great read. Inspired by the killings at Kent State University in 1970, it rattles along at an energetic pace with barely a page missing narrative push. There are a great many questions to answer - are the two sets of killings really connected? Are Vietnam veterans being exploited and if they are, who by? Who is responsible for the fatalities at the protest? What really happened with Wat back in theatre? It's to Chadwick's credit that he knits all these subplots together and builds the connections in a way that keeps the reader guessing but focused on the overall story.
The book does a great job of illuminating the paranoid atmosphere of Nixon's America and of representing the swirl of politics with all its many factions through characters that are well drawn and fully rounded. There's a large cast in this novel but nobody feels like a caricature or a cardboard cut-out. Wat himself - fans of English history will recognise the name and it's not an accident. Someone once left the L out of Walt by mistake and Wat liked the reference so much that he kept it - is an engaging central character. A deprived childhood has left him with attachment issues and he finds emotions difficult. But he's a dogged and intelligent investigator and he's earned the loyalty of some important people.
If you enjoy a good political thriller with plenty of action but also want something to think about after you've finished reading, Tin Soldiers is the one for you. There's a conspiracy to unravel, a tough and taciturn but intelligent central character, plenty of page-turning, and a perceptive analysis of a fraught time in the history of the United States.
Recommended.
You could also look at Liberty Bazaar, also by Chadwick, as two Americans find themselves in Liverpool during the American Civil War.
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