Vietnam: Ground Zero · #1

Body Count

by Kevin Randle and Bob Cornett · August 1984

8.0 / 10 average from 2 rated reviews

GERBER'S A-TEAM WAS LOOKING TO BUY TIME. BUT CHARLIE OWNED THE CLOCK! One morning there was nothing but hot, thick jungle and steaming swamp. And the Vietcong. The next morning there were three hundred sweating, groaning men chopping and chain sawing a hole in that particular hunk of hell. And that's where Captain Mack Gerber and his Scorpion Squad were going to set up shop. Right in the VCs backyard. Gerber's orders were simple: Let the VC know they didn't own the delta anymore; let them know they were in a lastditch fight; and make sure it was the last thing they'd ever know. But Victor Charlie had their own plans. A clock was ticking. Soon all hell would break loose and there wouldn't be enough survivors left to do a... body count.

Reviews (2)

Adam Lounsbery 6/10 October 10, 2007

Body Count is good, but not great. The prose is at best workmanlike and the characters are mostly two-dimensional, but it does deliver a good story in a brisk and effective fashion. Ed Gorman called the Vietnam: Ground Zero series (which is what The Scorpion Squad series metamorphosed into after four books) "Some of the most riveting war fiction written..." Ed Gorman's not exactly Harold Bloom, but his opinion still carries some weight, so I'm looking forward to reading more of the series and seeing if it gets better. Judging only by the first book, this is a pretty standard mid-'80s men's adventure series, albeit one based more in historical reality than the Executioner or Destroyer series. (Body Count is set in the Mekong Delta a few months before the Gulf of Tonkin incident.) On the plus side, however, Body Count does a decent job of showing how insanely dedicated the Viet Cong were, as well as how disorganized and ineffectual the ARVN were, giving a certain sense of futility to the U.S. Special Forces' and LLDB's climactic victory.

The Phantom 10/10 May 27, 2003

This book is a gem if there ever was one, this one gets a ten star plus from me. Some of the most realistic and brilliant writing I've ever seen in an action/adventure novel is contained in a mere 200 odd pages of this tale of a group of soldiers in the Vietnam war. The beginning of this excellent series begins before the camp-555 even exists, nothing more than a field in a dangerous area in vietnam, where these soldiers must build a base from scratch, with hostile forces nearby, then defend this base against enemy troops. This isn't just a book that you read, words on pages, but rather transports you right into the action, looking over the shoulders of the soliers, like a fly on the wall, observing, as if you were there yourself, the realism, danger, and suspense of these troops in the field. The characters are realistic, three dimensional, and you get to know several viewpoints, not just one main character. The authors were there, and they know how to write it the way it was. I couldn't recommend more an awesome book than this one, get this one wherever you can find it!