"The Forest of Assassins is a unique combination of startling fact and gripping fiction-which gives readers a new understanding of the war in Vietnam. It is must-read on every page."
----THOMAS FLEMING: Author of A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of the Civil War
"The Forest of Assassins is a great read, a novel as good as the best journalism, with vivid and accurate details driving a tale of danger and deception and betrayal during the Vietnam War. This book doesn't just feel researched, it feels lived.
Whether tightening the suspense - our protagonist, Navy Lieutenant Hank Dillon eyeball to eyeball with a VC soldier and watching for the skin to whiten on the man's finger curled around the trigger of his AK-47 - or describing the oppressive heat of an innocent afternoon on the Mekong Delta, David Forsmark and Timothy Imholt make you believe every word of it. I couldn't recommend it more highly.
-ROBERT FERRIGNO, NY Times best-selling novelist, Prayers for the Assassin
As real as fiction gets. A non-stop ride into combat told with perfection.
-BOB HAMER, veteran FBI undercover agent and the author of The Last Undercover
The Forest of Assassins is a historic thriller set in the earliest days of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. It involved the earliest of Navy SEAL teams. It is set in a time when the NAVY still did not admit these men existed, much less had they determined if those units would survive until the next conflict, or if the experiment would be abandoned.
The Forest of Assassins tells the story of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Hank Dillon, a squad commander, deep in the jungles of South Vietnam when America's involvement in the war was still in the "advisor" stage. Dillon's mission is to wreak havoc among the Viet Cong guerillas who are terrorizing the countryside.
Their mission-and even their presence in the region-is top secret. But Hank has a problem even bigger than a deadly and determined enemy; he has a traitor in the ranks.
Meanwhile, a suspicious NCIS cop is nosing around Hank's mysterious operation, certain that it is a front for drug running and other illegal activities.
Things are tense for the young Lieutenant who just wants to go home to his wife...intact