Review: Opium and the Red Rose by Michael Rogers

Revisiting the war-torn land that scarred his youth, a filmmaker cooperates in international espionage and finds love and atonement, in Opium and the Red Rose, a wide-ranging thriller by Michael Rogers.

It’s 1982. Danny Summers is working with a film crew recreating scenes of combat, when his life suddenly changes in the face of two unrelated incidents: an accidental death during the filming, and a stranger inviting him to meet with a senator on a matter of extreme confidentiality.

The accident takes Danny back to his Vietnam years when he served the military as a member of a cinematic initiative to bring the war home to America’s living rooms. In a way, it prepares him for a new step into the unknown as he learns Senator Mainland’s twisted scheme for dealing with an Asian drug lord named Khun Sa, an old pal of Danny’s, his driver in his Vietnam days. Mainland’s plan involves the purchase and destruction of millions of dollars worth of opium to prevent its sale in the US and give Mainland a strong basis for his political ambitions.

In the realm where everyone is being followed by someone and almost everyone has an assumed name and a secret agenda, things are never what they seem, as Danny slowly comes to realize, and keeps readers glued to every twist. One surprise is Mainland’s agent Susan, who assists him in organizing Mainland’s complicated conspiracy. She carries deep secrets that will draw her to Danny, also burdened with ghosts from the past – revealing their past mistakes and sorrows will help form the bond they both so desperately seek.

Meanwhile, in a short time they have met up with the drug lord, and a strange series of events causes Susan’s picture, and her new title, The Red Rose, to make headlines, greatly displeasing Mainland whose evil hold over her may be threatened, along with his self-aggrandizing ploy. When Danny and his entourage explore a ghostly mountain graveyard, all hell will break loose, for a story that is at times unnerving but consistently compelling.

Rogers is uniquely qualified to create and control this mystery-laden, multilayered saga, having echoed his hero in a significant respect: he served in Vietnam filming frontline combat, and that firsthand knowledge permeates this thriller, giving it a riveting layer of historical realism. His grasp of international intrigue and understanding of personal psychology are well-matched in this story, with Danny shown as a complicated, independent actor who can think on his feet and look for the good in others that he may feel he lacks in himself. Rogers’ idealism gave rise to hopes that seeing the war could inspire Americans to protest its horrors and rise up in protest, and that subtext can be found in this historical thriller.

Rogers proves himself here as a talented wordsmith as well, with sentences to be savored just as much as the spiraling plot. He is at home equally with narrative and dialogue, capable of bringing to life a twisting, constantly changing plotline with nasty double-dealing villains and admirable fighters for what’s right, going toe-to-toe in powerful, readily visualized locales that have cinematic immediacy – a deft balance of story, character, and setting that makes Opium and the Red Rose a wholly satisfying read.