Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction "A dark descendant of Conrad's and Hemmingway's adventure stories...Goes hell-for-leather across the landscape." - New York Times Book Review In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers - and the price of survival was dangerously high. "A dark descendant of Conrad's and Hemmingway's adventure stories...Goes hell-for-leather across the landscape." - New York Times Book Review "Compulsively readable...As forcefully as any novel one can think of, this novel conveys the cynicism, the terror, and the appetite for new experiences that have marked recent years." - The New Yorker "Stone's tale of heroin, smugglers, and moral striving remains one of the most relevant American crime novels ever written." - Crime Reads " Dog Soldiers is so good, so interesting and series and funny and frightening, so absorbing, so impressive, so masterful...It is splendid, terrific action suspense." - Esquire "A fastpaced, action-fraught novel." - Ploughshares "A feverish novel of suspense, Dog Soldiers ranks alongside the work of Michael Herr and Tim O’Brien as an impassioned reckoning with how the Vietnam War changed America." - Madison Smartt Bell "The most important novel of the year." - Washington Post ROBERT STONE (1937–2015) was the acclaimed author of eight novels and two story collections, including  Dog Soldiers, winner of the National Book Award, and  Bear and His Daughter, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2007. Dog Soldiers A Novel By Robert Stone Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1994 Robert Stone All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-395-86025-0 Contents Title Page, Table of Contents, Copyright, Dedication, Epigraph, Dog Soldiers, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 There was only one bench in the shade and converse went for it, although it was already occupied. He inspected the stone surface for unpleasant substances, found none, and sat down. Beside him he placed the oversized briefcase he had been carrying; its handle shone with the sweat of his palm He sat facing Tu Do Street resting one hand across the case and raising the other to his forehead to check the progress of his fever. It was Converse's nature to worry about his health. The other occupant of the bench was an American lady of middling age. It was siesta hour and there was no one else in the park. The children who usually played soccer on the lawns were across the street, sleeping in the shade of their mothers' street stalls. The Tu Do hustlers had withdrawn into the arcade of Eden Passage where they lounged sleepy-eyed, rousing themselves now and then to hiss after the passing of a sweating American. It was three o'clock and the sky was almost cloudless. The rain was late. There was no wind, and the palm crowns and poinciana blossoms of the park trees hung motionless. Converse glanced secretly at the lady beside him. She was wearing a green print dress and a canvas hat with a sun visor. She had offered him a weary smile upon his sitting down; he wondered if there would be compatrial conversation. Her face was as smooth as a young girl's but gray and colorless so that it was difficult to tell whether she was youthfully preserved or prematurely aged. Her waxen coloring was like an opium smoker's but she did not seem at all the sort. She was reading The Citadel by A. J. Cronin. The lady looked up suddenly from her book, surprising Converse in mid-appraisal. She was certainly not an opium smoker. Her eyes were clear and warm brown. Converse, whose tastes were eccentric, found her attractive. "Well," he said in his hearty, imitation-Army accent, "we'll have some weather pretty soon." Out of politeness, she looked at the sky. "It's certainly going to rain," she assured him. "But not for a while." "Guess not," Converse said thoughtfully. When he looked away, she returned to her book. Converse had come to the park to catch the cool breeze that always came before the rain and to read his mail. He was killing time before his appointment, trying to steady his nerve. He did not wish to appear on the terrasse of the Continental at such an early hour. He took a small stack of letters from his case and looked them over. There was one from a Dutch underground paper which published in English, asking him for a Saigon piece. There were two checks, one from his fatherin-law and one from a newspaper in Ireland. There was also a letter from his wife in Berkeley. He took a handkerchief from his shirt pocket, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and began to r