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Outrage
A fictional account of the events leading to the massacre of Marines in Beirut focuses on a gunnery sergeant on intelligence duty, a young corporal, and a young, beautiful Arab informant who discover the plot to bomb the barracks
Mass Market Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
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About the author
Dale A. Dye
30 books35 followersDale Adam Dye is an American author, actor, and businessman. He served for many years in the U.S. Marine Corps, rising in rank from Private to Captain during the course of his career, which included service as a Marine Combat Correspondent during the war in Viet Nam. He retired from the USMC in 1984, and has since worked primarily in film and television in addition to writing several books.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 21, 2025
The writing is not great, it as well as the storyline, characters, and dialogue was kind of corny. It is, however, very much of its time. This was the popular style for most political/action/espionage etc… type thrillers in the 70s and 80s. Its not as bad as what you see in the really cheap “men’s adventure” stories of that era that featured a superhero super-soldier/cop/spy who kicked ass then bedded the big breasted babe, but its not far off. Not quite at the more respectable level of WEB Griffin or Tom Clancy, but the author, Dye, has some credibility given his twenty plus years of Marine Corps service and the fact that he actually served in Lebanon.
One thing I do not like is when authors try to phonetically write out slang/accented dialogue which the author tries to do here with some characters like Rojas (his first line is “Dat da dude?”); so we get some attempt at conveying his “street talk” that is cringy at best and slows down pacing as you have to sound some lines out as you read. Its better to just convey a character speaks with an accent or uses whatever vernacular if its important, then let the reader “hear it” when we read the dialogue. Or let the reader assume it based on how the character is described. We have imaginations and can figure it out. But it generally serves no point to phonetically spell out accented English or slang unless it is important to the plot. Here it is not.
In addition to that, the dialogue is just plain cheesy, and that goes for most scenes, from high level meetings with the President, to conversations between Marines, Israeli soldiers, Palestinian fighters, etc… it was all overdone. The worst was the massive overload of Marine talk, especially that of “lifers” who relish it, here it was just way too much. No one uses it that much, it was like the author went crazy with his inside knowledge to show everyone his inside knowledge.
The story primarily follows junior Marine, Corporal Steve Mallory, and a few more senior Marines and other tangential characters. The story serves as a tool for the author to describe what political actiions led to the Embassy and Marine and French barracks bombings which we know are coming so he can rant about them, though a fictional story probably isn’t the best outlet for that. The story took an interesting shift, to focusing on the relationship between Mallory and his company Gunny who became a mentor to him, but this was derailed by a silly turn where the Mallory developed a relationship with a beautiful, voluptuous, Lebanese women which led him into international intrigue and romance. Just as the Colonel assigns the Gunny to a one man intel collection mission because his intel shop apparently sucked (as did all intel agencies in country apparently) and this crusty gunny is just the man for that job. He also thinks acting like a PAO is how you collect intel though he lucked out because Mallory’s femme fatale fell into his lap (in more ways than one). It was inplausable and cheesy. I’ve read more than a few novels set during the Lebanese Civil War (and even more non-fiction) and this was definetely one of the cheesier novels. For one specifcally centered on the Marine Barracks bombing, CX Moreaux’s book DIstant Valor is much better; it is more focused on the Marine “grunt’s” authentic perspective. Here the author also tried to add some high level political intrigue but he used made up characters for the most part (the National Security Advisor who is oft blamed for the disaster is played by a different person, not sure why he even appeared), this goes for pretty much all the major characters (the MAU commander, BLT commander, Ambassador, DATT, etc… and this fictionalizing of real people made everyting else feel made up or at least possibly fictionalized and thus took away the potential power of the story that was based around true events, the bombings of the embassy and barracks.
Perhaps if I read this years ago in the 90s I would have enjoyed it like I did many novels of this style, but my tastes shifted not long after, I expect good writing and plausible plot lines and this didn’t do it for me. I finished it, and it went pretty fast. But it did not hold up over time. 2/5 stars.
One thing I do not like is when authors try to phonetically write out slang/accented dialogue which the author tries to do here with some characters like Rojas (his first line is “Dat da dude?”); so we get some attempt at conveying his “street talk” that is cringy at best and slows down pacing as you have to sound some lines out as you read. Its better to just convey a character speaks with an accent or uses whatever vernacular if its important, then let the reader “hear it” when we read the dialogue. Or let the reader assume it based on how the character is described. We have imaginations and can figure it out. But it generally serves no point to phonetically spell out accented English or slang unless it is important to the plot. Here it is not.
In addition to that, the dialogue is just plain cheesy, and that goes for most scenes, from high level meetings with the President, to conversations between Marines, Israeli soldiers, Palestinian fighters, etc… it was all overdone. The worst was the massive overload of Marine talk, especially that of “lifers” who relish it, here it was just way too much. No one uses it that much, it was like the author went crazy with his inside knowledge to show everyone his inside knowledge.
The story primarily follows junior Marine, Corporal Steve Mallory, and a few more senior Marines and other tangential characters. The story serves as a tool for the author to describe what political actiions led to the Embassy and Marine and French barracks bombings which we know are coming so he can rant about them, though a fictional story probably isn’t the best outlet for that. The story took an interesting shift, to focusing on the relationship between Mallory and his company Gunny who became a mentor to him, but this was derailed by a silly turn where the Mallory developed a relationship with a beautiful, voluptuous, Lebanese women which led him into international intrigue and romance. Just as the Colonel assigns the Gunny to a one man intel collection mission because his intel shop apparently sucked (as did all intel agencies in country apparently) and this crusty gunny is just the man for that job. He also thinks acting like a PAO is how you collect intel though he lucked out because Mallory’s femme fatale fell into his lap (in more ways than one). It was inplausable and cheesy. I’ve read more than a few novels set during the Lebanese Civil War (and even more non-fiction) and this was definetely one of the cheesier novels. For one specifcally centered on the Marine Barracks bombing, CX Moreaux’s book DIstant Valor is much better; it is more focused on the Marine “grunt’s” authentic perspective. Here the author also tried to add some high level political intrigue but he used made up characters for the most part (the National Security Advisor who is oft blamed for the disaster is played by a different person, not sure why he even appeared), this goes for pretty much all the major characters (the MAU commander, BLT commander, Ambassador, DATT, etc… and this fictionalizing of real people made everyting else feel made up or at least possibly fictionalized and thus took away the potential power of the story that was based around true events, the bombings of the embassy and barracks.
Perhaps if I read this years ago in the 90s I would have enjoyed it like I did many novels of this style, but my tastes shifted not long after, I expect good writing and plausible plot lines and this didn’t do it for me. I finished it, and it went pretty fast. But it did not hold up over time. 2/5 stars.
December 12, 2021
Okay, that was excellent. At first I was under the impression that its prose was quite simplistic and the book was mainly of interest just for the historical setting, but as it turns out it was extremely well-written.
A good mix of fact and fiction. Opening one's eyes to what went on and managing to entertain without pulling punches - rather, if anything it twists the knife. I can only imagine it would have been a very difficult book to write.
A good mix of fact and fiction. Opening one's eyes to what went on and managing to entertain without pulling punches - rather, if anything it twists the knife. I can only imagine it would have been a very difficult book to write.
October 13, 2020
A fictional story about the real situation that happened to our soldiers in Beirut.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews