Review: Never Say Die

Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

"My mother's never accepted it. She needs a body to bury." 

General Kistner sighed. "Of course. The wives. It's always the wives. There were so many widows, one tends to forget." 

"She hasn't forgotten." 

Set in the shadow of Vietnam, FMC travels to Vietnam to discover what happened to, claimed KIA, father, for her mother who is dying from cancer. She's bitter against her father, feeling he put his love of flying and daredevilry ahead of his family. She meets the MMC, who works as a sort of bounty hunter for the government for remains of soldiers or find out if they decided to change identities and stay in Vietnam. When he hears her last name, he realizes one of his files is about her father, who might have been a traitor to USA and has a big bounty, so he decides to convince her that they should work together. 

They didn't exchange a word; just that look, that sad and knowing smile between women, was enough. 

I think this didn't age the best, there's a bunch of trying to work through and weigh the cost of the Vietnam War and CIA workings in Laos but there were sure were some cringe ways of speaking about the people of Vietnam and Laos here too. This leaned a little more towards the thriller mystery with the romance having that push/pull of I hate you/I want you. Grappling with the cost of war and how it's viewed/spoke of is always the most interesting part of the books for me.

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