Missing in Action

William J. Linn was an associate professor of English literature at the University of Michigan, a position he earned in 1979. He was the recipient of three Fulbright lectureships and taught universally at colleges in Bulgaria, Beijing, and Burkina Faso. During his long teaching tenure, Linn also authored three novels: Missing in Action (1981), Kambi Hai (1987), and The People's Republic (1989). I've always enjoyed a rowdy action-adventure novel featuring the prison-break plot device. With that fondness, I chose to read Linn's Missing in Action, published as a paperback by Avon.

In the novel's beginning, William Tompkins is serving in the Army during America's involvement in the Vietnam War. While the year isn't specified, based on the novel's events, I am guessing this is around 1972. During a firefight (off page), Tompkins becomes the only surviving member of his platoon and is quickly taken into captivity by the Viet Cong. 

In captivity, Tompkins, who is simply referred to as “The Prisoner” in the book's narrative, refuses to provide any information beyond name, rank, and serial number. He's placed in general quarters with a dozen or more fellow prisoners. The narrative flows into a rather one-dimensional plot that provides Tompkins' day-to-day activities, including gardening, masonry, roadwork, and other menial labor. There's an interesting plot device with Tompkins feuding with another prisoner, but that is quickly sewn up.

Eventually, Tompkins makes a break for the jungle and escapes captivity, only to be recaptured days later in a different part of North Vietnam. Here, the menial labor isn't an option. Instead, Tompkins is tortured repeatedly by a sadistic Cong leader nicknamed “No Neck”. These include starvation, solitary confinement, whippings, and mental harassment. Eventually, Tompkins is saved by an older, much wiser Viet Cong leader who was originally educated in America. He forms a unique bond with Tompkins that leads the narrative into a literary trance involving politics, war, peace, and America's involvement in Vietnam's internal struggles. 

Missing in Action has nothing in common with the 1980s action film industry that often used POWs and their captivity as its cinematic bedrock. It's void of the proverbial action star, gunfire, fighting, and so forth. If you thirst for that flavor, then look no further than the M.I.A. Hunter series of paperbacks. This novel is a literary examination of captivity and the concept of mental freedom despite physical boundaries. 

Missing in Action is also a rare example of a book written in the present tense, a fad that consumes most contemporary fiction (one that I'm not fond of). It was interesting to read a novel written in this style in 1981. This perspective makes the novel feel more emotional with the peaks and valleys of Tompkins' daily conditions. 

I did enjoy the book, but I feel like Thomas Taylor's A Piece of this Country is a better example of the prisoner-of-war formula. You can obtain Missing in Action HERE and Taylor's novel HERE.