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BOLD SONS OF ERIN, by Owen Parry. William Morrow. 352 pages. $24.95.
THE CHARGE OF THE Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg caps an astonishing novel that opens at night in a remote Pennsylvania graveyard, where a Welsh major and two Pennsylvania Dutch soldiers are unearthing a surprise in a rotted coffin, as a mob of surly, hate-filled miners, every one an angry Hibernian, moves menacingly close.
Those who have read Owen Parry's previous four Civil War whodunits will expect fine writing, accurate history and wild turns in the plot--and they will not be disappointed in "Bold Sons of Erin," the latest in the Abel Jones series, released this month.
A Union general has been murdered and hideously mutilated, certainly the victim of Fenians. Or was it the Russian secret police? Or the Confederates? Or perhaps a coal millionaire, fat with wartime profits? The much-wounded Maj. Jones, his nights tormented by dreams erupting from his long service against the wild Pushtoons along the Afghanistan border, is equally troubled in his waking hours by woman problems.
Is his darling wife, for whom he waited so long, infected with early women's liberation ideas? Will the madam of the town's swankiest whorehouse insist on his help? (After all, he is a rigid chapel Methodist.) And what of the German leper woman, madder than six Charles Mansons, and what of her sable-haired familiar, an Irish beauty who melts men's hearts? And minds. And his Teutonic Marxist landlady. And which of these remarkable Valkyries threw the deadly bomb? And were the German revolutionaries of Missouri behind it?
Maj. Jones has decided opinions on Gens. George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside, and they reflect the author's keen grasp of Civil War fact. They are not the only big names who parade through this book, creating new problems for Jones. Secretary of State William Seward; Abraham Lincoln's confidential secretary, John Nicolay; Lincoln himself; and the keeper of the St. Elizabeth's madhouse all have a part to play. And the murdered general? He was not who he was thought to be, not once, but twice.
I could tell you much more, but I fear spoiling the surprises that lurk on nearly every page, nor have I the author's ability to conjure the lilt and phrasing of long-ago language. I could describe a wonderful meal, but that would not be the same as tucking in your napkin and having at it.
The author, under his birth name of Ralph Peters, has established a fine reputation for his books on today's Europe and the Middle East, based not on armchair generalship, like most of us, but on years of what professional military men wryly describe as "breaking things and killing people."
His long trilingual service in that triangle of misery bounded by Moscow, Berlin and Karachi, his astute grasp of world history in the last two centuries, and his ability to find just the right word for every scene mark the Abel Jones series as unique in Civil War writing. Do I compare him to the effusive hagiography now abroad in the name of literature and cinema? Not if I wish a libel suit.
Do I recommend this book series? Try this simple experiment: Buy all five books, send the kids to grandma's, fill the freezer with microwave dinners, call in sick for a week and, when you emerge, try to remember what century it is. Parry's skill with the visual and the auditory, plus the rainbow of wartime odors (a sense much neglected by writers) will leave you in a different world, one from which you will emerge with reluctance. Too extreme? Well, if you can't take off a week, try a diluted schedule and I still know you won't be disappointed.
THOMAS P. LOWRY, M.D., of Woodbridge is a graduate of Stanford Medical School and the author of six books on the Civil War. His latest two are an edited diary of Dr. William M. Smith of the 85th New York, titled "Swamp Doctor. A Union Surgeon in the Marshes of Virginia and North Carolina," and "Tarnished Scalpels. The Court-martials of Fifty Union Surgeons," co-authored with Jack D. Welsh, M.D. Both books are from Stackpole Books.