Dan Cragg enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. He is the author of Inside the VC and the NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning),
Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier's Prize. He recently retired from his work as an analyst for the Department of Defense.Sherman applied the Page 69 Test to their new novel, Starfist: Double Jeopardy, and reported the following:
Page 69 of Double Jeopardy, Starfist book 14, is and is not representative of the book as a whole. It is in that it shows something of how Dan Cragg and I strive for accuracy and verisimilitude. Thirty-fourth FIST, the primary unit in the series, is about to be given orders for a deployment, possibly once more against the toughest opponents they have faced in the past. The characters on this page are third level, never central to the action. Therein, page 69 is not representative. Most of the novel, in this book and the entire series, concerns the Marines of third platoon, Company L, of the infantry battalion of 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team. There is an ongoing backstory, showing the lives (and loves) of the Marines on their home base; most of that backstory in this book comes before page 69. The rest of the novel follows the Marines on the deployment. The Marines find themselves in a three- or four-sided conflict, depending on how one looks at it. Some scenes or entire chapters are shown from the points of view of members of the other sides. Again, verisimilitude--Dan and I like to show that there is a universe beyond the strict confines of one platoon.Learn more about the book at the publisher's website, and visit David Sherman's website.
Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
