The Feather Men

Product Information

And, at its heart, this shocking and intriguing real-life adventure raises the moral question of whether private citizens should take the law into their own hands. Another parallel with The Quiet American, where the first film to be made of the novel, the 1958 version, with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy, not the second version in 2002 with Michael Caine, ends up completely distorting the original story, making the English journalist, played by Redgrave, appear to be a naive and bumbling has-been and Pyle, the American agent played by Audie Murphy, is vindicated as righteous and far-seeing, in working towards the establishment of a 'third force' in Vietnam to defeat the communists and replace the effete and outdated French colonialists with the righteous forces of American freedom. I will certainly read it again one day, before too long, if only to appreciate better the importance of the leading chapters, as well as recapture the thrill of the story itself. Truth be told, I had to get through the first fifty or so pages, but after that I couldn’t put the book down. The important thing is to be sure that the reasons are right, and that we admit the wrong, and that we don’t lie to ourselves.

Throughout those fourteen years the Feather Men—so known because "our touch is light"—were never far behind the hit team. Once I’d grasped the plot, I surprised myself in realising that I had actually begun to rather enjoy it; that is if a reader, who in this situation is essentially a voyeur, can actually claim to be favorably interested in seedy sex, brutal violence and carefully calculated cold blooded killing.If this story is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then I take my hat off to the “Feather Men” for looking after those that the Law finds it impossible to defend. black boards, spine lettered in gilt; dust wrapper, a little worn, edges lightly creased and split; Bloomsbury, London, 1991. There were several times I wondered what Truman Capote would have done had he been presented this story to tell, but the basic fact is, Capote would never have found himself in the position this author did. I’d therefore like to think that there are a group of people who believe that, “When the police cannot provide adequate protection (because criminals are more sophisticated at finding loopholes in the law) then more appropriate methods have to be found. It was written like a non-fiction work (every acronym or slightly unusual word was then explained in brackets, frequently quite unnecessarily), and the "exciting" scenes were told in a completely matter-of-fact way, losing any sense of tension.

I know I would have enjoyed it far more had I not been second-guessing all the way through whether it was supposed to be a thriller or a retelling of a true story. At the end of the book, Fiennes holds up his hands and justifies his use of his background knowledge and experience to ‘paint’ the scenes for which there was no primary (first-hand) source. And in the end he succeeds not only in foiling de Villiers final attempt but in capturing him as well. The original Special Forces operatives are made to appear brutal and cynical, no better than killers for hire.I don’t want to throw any spoilers into this review, just that I’d like to believe the whole book is true.