The Incident at Naha

New York: Simon and Schuster. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1972). First Edition. Hardcover. [nice tight copy with minimal shelfwear; mostly-white jacket shows a bit of soiling]. The author's second novel (but first mystery), "a strange combination of hippie life in the West Village, wealth in Long Island and the war in Vietnam." It's narrated by the female half of an interracial couple, both graduate students in N.Y. (and he a Vietnam vet), as they try to solve the brutal murder of their friend (another vet). Along the way, it emerges that his death may be connected to an attempt to cover up a wartime incident "that has overtones of the massacre at My Lai" -- the CIA is running its own investigation from that angle -- and some of the elusive evidence involves pages from a mid-nineteenth-century diary, the remainder of which contains "politically and historically explosive" contents. (Interestingly, his only previous novel -- "The Journey of Tao Kim Nam," published in 1959, had an (early) Vietnam war setting.) Subsequent to this book, he published his work (for both adult and young adult readers) under the name Malcolm Bosse. .