Review: A must read for anyone interested in war literature
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 31, 2014
Anyone interested in war literature will find Year of the Monkey an interesting and important entry about the Vietnam War. Ron Argo, a decorated veteran, writes with the detail, rhythm, and audacity of someone who has experienced the chaos of war and returned from the middle of the flames singed but alive.  Like Kurt Vonnegut, who was a  soldier turned journalist and writer, Argo is an articulate person with an observers eye and flair for description and urgency – just the right person to pull us into the conflagration and to make us think about it all at the same time.The novel begins Stateside in a prison where the protagonist, Payne (a military journalist) is awaiting trial murder and war atrocities. When the story goes back in time to his newspaper post in Vietnam, we find a decent, humane man and the mystery becomes apparent: how is THIS man, the same one on trial for murder?  Soon we meet Willingham, a rough around the edges sole survivor of a special forces unit, who has been mysteriously assigned to work with Payne, and soon everything gets even murkier when Payne is drawn into covert CIA operations involving Willingham. Meanwhile he is drawn into a Dante-esque hell of conspiracies, atrocities, and political mayhem, all which lead him, eventually, to the prison post-war.Argo paints a deliriously vicious portrait of war where there are so many agendas and levels of inhumanity that it’s difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys, and it becomes questionable if anyone can actually be the good guy in the morass of the Vietnam War.  I thoroughly recommend this and Argo's other novel The Sum of His Worth. Argo is an author who is not afraid of difficult topics, and his moral compulsion to expose inhumanity and corruption pulses.