GETTING OLD IS HELL!

J. P. Beaumont is finally taking some time off to have his knee replacement surgery. But instead of taking his mind off work, the operation plunges him into one of the most perplexing and mind-blowing mysteries he's ever faced.

A series of dreams take him back to his early days on the force at Seattle P.D. and then, even earlier, to his days in Vietnam, reminding him of people and events he hasn't thought about in years.

His past collides with his present in this complex and thrilling story that explores loss and heartbreak, duty and honor, and, most importantly, the staggering cost of war and the debts we owe those who served in the Vietnam War, and those in uniform today.

READ THE STORY BEHIND SECOND WATCH

Second Watch includes a segment in which Beau meets up with a former schoolmate of mine, Doug Davis, a West Point graduate who died in Vietnam in 1966. Through the magic of fiction Beau and Doug meet and interact in Vietnam. In the book, Beau eventually also meets up with Bonnie Abney, the girl who was engaged to marry Doug at the time of his death.

Those of you who have read Second Watch already know that the back of the book contains a photo of Doug, that very real fallen hero from Bisbee. That photo, taken in Vietnam two days before Doug's death, came to light solely as a result of my writing Second Watch. As I was finishing the manuscript, a review copy of some of the material was sent to one of Doug's fellow West Point classmates. The piece was then forwarded to another classmate who went down into his basement and found the photo, hiding in a box where it had been left forgotten through all the intervening years. It arrived in Bonnie's life for the first time in an e-mail sent in early January.

There are almost 60,000 names on that wall in Washington. Bonnie and Doug's story of loving and losing is only one of them and yet it is emblematic of them all. Along the way we met up with several of those women, ones who had watched as the loves of their lives went off to the Vietnam War and came back home in flag-draped coffins.

JAJ