The Perfect Soldier

by Ralph Peters

Deliberately maimed on a goodwill mission to the former Soviet republic, Major Christopher Ritter is headed for another land of intrigue: Washington, DC. From the Pentagon to the Senate, he's entering a different kind of war, in which sex, money and influence are wielded like laser-bombs. At stake are a series of photographs said to depict the KGB murder of American POWs—and the success of a secret, multibillion-dollar oil deal. The perfect soldier—and the perfect pawn—Major Ritter stands on the firing line, seeking a measure of atonement in a city without shame.

Genres: Military Fiction, Fiction

303 pages, Hardcover

First published July 27, 1995

About the author

Ralph Peters is a novelist, an essayist, a former career soldier, and an adventurer in the 19th-century sense. He is the author of a dozen critically acclaimed novels, two influential works on strategy, "Beyond Terror" and "Fighting for the Future".

Mr. Peters' works can also be found under the pen name "Owen Parry." He also appears frequently as a commentator on television and radio networks.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/ralphp...

Reviews

[Greg Girard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A compelling story

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is very well plotted until the final scene. It isn’t that the story is particularly original or interesting, but Peters is deft as withholding information until it will have the most impact in both understanding the past and setting up the future. This makes the story seem better than it actually is. The story would not be good enough to stay with if we knew certain things early on. Then there is the rest of the book.

I’ll dwell on three problems: characters, nastiness, and style. The protagonist is a self-righteous prick. We are supposed to like him, but he is unlikable. Other characters are mostly seen from his perspective, so nobody measures up to the protagonists standards and therefore not to the standards of this story. You can find a partial exception or two, but that is the basic dynamic. The result is that you spend a lot of time in the gutter with creeps, even though the author does not think that his protagonist and at least one other character are creeps. Tellingly, all the good people are military.

Some of the characters are irredeemably nasty. They do horrible things to people, then do even more horrible things to people, then they kill them, mostly. These scenes go on and on. The relentless nastiness became hard to bear. I loathe these characters and I loathe the author, not so much for creating them, but for indulging them.

Peters is a terrible writer, and I’ll note this in two ways. First, he decides to get all poetic from time to time, in fact with punctuated frequency. He has no gift for this. What he probably thinks is his most beautiful writing is godawful. It is embarrassing. Awful. Secondly, he has certain prose mannerisms, Ralph Peters clichés, if you will, phrases a parodist would use to make readers laugh at a Ralph Peters satire, should there be an audience for one.

Peters skillfully ladles out his plot points, but is otherwise a terrible writer.

[Vincent Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

So enchanting I lost the worst to say of it ... The Perfect Soldier, takes on one of the most troubling episodes in recent American history: the Soviet incarceration of American POWs, and their abandonment by the United States Government. A U.S. Army goodwill mission to a former Soviet republic has ended in terror and tragedy - one officer murdered and a second, Major Christopher Ritter, deliberately maimed.

Now Ritter's heading home, leaving one land of intrigue for another: Washington D.C. From the Pentagon to the Senate, he's entering a different kind war - one in which sex, money, and influence are wielded like laser-bombs, and men of honor like Major Chris Ritter make easy targets. At stake are a series of photographs rumored to depict the KGB murder of American prisoners of war. At home, their exposure could set off a political firestorm. Abroad, they could have a devastating impact on U.S. relations with the new Russia. But the real shock waves hit behind closed doors, for whoever takes control of the photographs will possess the greatest aphrodisiac of all: power. Chris Ritter has been brought into the game by Charlene Whyte, a brilliant woman with a painful secret and now Assistant Secretary of Defense for Humanitarian Assistance. Perhaps the most-hated official in Washington, and the nemesis of the Pentagon brass, Charlene Whyte is full of good intentions...the kind that get good soldiers killed. And it's what Ritter doesn't know about Charlene, her secret connections and desires, that could make him the next casualty.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the story was overall very good. I listened to the audio version of this book and found the reader to be very bad. I fault at times the story was very slow and I am not sure if it was the reader or the story itself.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 04.06.06