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Overview
A female cadet has collapsed and died while parading past the reviewing stand on a hot September morning. The autopsy establishes that she had sex with three different men the night before. Some claim that it’s evidence of a major military scandal.
Superintendent Ry Slaight fears it may be evidence of a shocking crime. His daughter—a cadet herself—is endangering her life in a quest for the truth. And among those who know the truth, the watchword is don’t ask, don’t tell . . .
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781497663510 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 371 |
| Sales rank: | 213,970 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Truscott grew up in the army, living over the years in more than ten states, four foreign countries, and twenty-seven different houses or apartments by the time he was eighteen. In 1965, he entered West Point via an appointment from Patsy T. Mink, Democrat of Hawaii, where the family had long ago established residency. He graduated after what might be called a checkered career. In May 1970, he found himself in a dispute with the army over an article he wrote for the Village Voice about the rampant yet un-acknowledged problem of heroin abuse in the army—specifically, in the Fifth Mechanized Infantry Division at Ft. Carson. The army refused permission to publish the article, and Truscott refused to withdraw it from publication. What they used to call in the army a “flap” ensued, and resignation from the army came soon thereafter.
In August 1970, Truscott went to work as a staff writer for the Village Voice. He has written for many major magazines, including the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Esquire, the Nation, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Weekly, Playboy, Penthouse, Metropolitan Home, Saveur, and many others.
In 1976, Truscott wrote and published the bestselling novel Dress Gray, which was later produced as an NBC miniseries, scripted by Gore Vidal, in 1986. After Dress Gray, Truscott wrote the bestseller Army Blue and published a third novel, Rules of the Road, in 1990. Truscott’s fourth novel, Heart of War, was published in June 1997. His fifth novel, Full Dress Gray, published in July 1998, is the long-awaited sequel to his first novel.
Read an Excerpt
Full Dress Gray
By Lucian K. Truscott IV
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1998 Lucian Truscott Co. Inc.All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-6351-0
CHAPTER 1
It was the day after Labor Day, and it was hot. The new Superintendent of West Point had awakened at five A.M. and had gone for a run down Thayer Road. By the time he returned to Quarters 100, around six, the temperature was already in the eighties, headed quickly, he knew, into the nineties.
His wife, Samantha, greeted him at the back door with a bottle of cold water. "You're looking a little worse for the wear, General Slaight." She laughed as he collapsed weakly on a kitchen chair and drained the bottle. Sweat was pouring down his face, his graying hair was matted to his scalp, and his ARMY T-shirt was soaked clear through.
"It's going to be a scorcher," he said, panting.
"I wonder if you shouldn't put off the parade until the weekend," his wife mused. "I was watching the news. It's supposed to cool off by Saturday." She crossed the kitchen and switched on the coffeepot. Come December, they would celebrate their twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. Her hair was pinned up on the top of her head with some kind of clip, and she hadn't yet put on her makeup, but mornings had always been kind to her. She woke up with color in her cheeks and bright eyes and a wry, crinkly smile that hinted conspiratorially at her prevailing mood, which was usually one of ironic skepticism and a low toleration for army bullshit. Slaight watched her rinsing a couple of cups at the sink. She was a remarkably beautiful woman. There had been days when he thought that he regretted having married this sometimes difficult, demanding, and headstrong woman. But by nightfall his regret had inevitably faded into the kind of comfortable acceptance that landmarked marriages that had gone the distance like theirs. If time didn't heal every little wound of married life, it sure as hell served as a good Band-Aid.
"Don't think I can cancel the parade. It's the pass in review welcoming me to West Point, and the Corps practiced all last week. Gibson's been laying on this parade all summer," he said, referring to the Commandant of Cadets, Brigadier General Jack Gibson, the hard-charging infantry officer who was in charge of cadet military training and the disciplinary system. Beginning his third year as Com, the prematurely graying young general with the huge black eyebrows had been nicknamed "Black Jack" by cadets who had become accustomed to encountering his grim face during the Com's frequent surprise inspections of the barracks.
"Well, I think it's too hot," said Samantha, pouring herself and the general cups of coffee.
"I agree with you," he said. "But I'm afraid it's too late. The Chief of Staff is already on his way up here." He checked his watch. "We'd better get dressed. We're supposed to meet his plane up at Stewart Field at eight-forty-five."
"Tell me it wasn't Gibson who invited him. Please."
Slaight laughed. "Laying on a big welcome for the new Supe is his job, Sam."
"And I'll just bet he used the opportunity to its fullest advantage. His own." Disdain broke her words into individual syllables draped with irony as her voice slipped back into the cadences of her native New Orleans.
"I wouldn't put it past him. Gibson's a piece of work," said the general.
He stood up and pulled his wife close, kissing her lingeringly. She gave him a mock struggle and pulled away, touching the damp front of her robe. "Look at this. You're so stinky and sweaty, I'm going to have to put this straight into the wash."
He pulled off his T-shirt and stepped out of his running shorts. Naked, grinning ear to ear, he handed his sweaty clothes to her. "Throw these in the wash while you're at it."
She dropped the wet wad of clothing like it was contaminated. "Do it yourself, General," she instructed. "What do you think that third star earned you? If you think rank is a vacation from shit details, you've got a big surprise coming, Superintendent Slaight."
She stopped in the kitchen door and gave his nude body a slow once-over and grinned. "Why am I getting this feeling that returning to West Point has brought out the boy in you?"
" 'Cause it has," said Slaight, sprinting toward her. She raced for the back stairs, taking them two at a time. He caught her at the landing, wrapping her tightly in his arms. "We've got time," he whispered. He kissed her again, holding the back of her neck as she reached up and unclipped her hair, letting it fall to her shoulders. He ran his fingers through the little bursts and streaks of silver that shone in the soft light filtering through the sheer curtains on the landing window, and he heard her sigh as she pulled away.
"Later, buster."
It was going to be a long hot day, but there were sure as hell worse ways to begin.
It was only a short walk to the reviewing stand from Quarters 100, located on the west side of the Plain. It seemed to Slaight that every step he took deposited a shovelful of irony atop the neatly trimmed grass.
It was thirty years ago that he had been walking the area when he heard that Samantha's brother, David Hand, had been found dead by drowning up at Lake Popolopen, about a dozen miles northwest of West Point. The Academy had acted the way institutions act when they are confronted by uncomfortable if not potentially dangerous news. Hurriedly the death of a plebe had been swept under the proverbial rug, and life at the Academy had been returned to what passed for normal. Slaight had spent the rest of that year and a good portion of the next trying to find out what had happened to David Hand. When it was proven that he had been gay and had died at the hands of his cadet lover, the granite of what the cadets called their "rockbound highland home" had seemed to crack under the strain. Slaight had in fact been so disillusioned by the experience of going up against the institutional inertia of the Academy that he had told the then Superintendent, General Rylander, he was going to resign before graduation and forgo his commission as a second lieutenant of infantry.
Then something had happened. Judge Hand, the father of David and Samantha, walked into his barracks room the morning he was going to submit his resignation and sat down on the bed and told Slaight a story. He was a father with a son who all his life had dreamt of being a West Pointer and an Army officer, and now his son and his dreams were dead. It would break Judge Hand's heart to see another young man's dreams dashed against the hard reality of his son's tragic death.
As Judge Hand spoke, Slaight's friends Leroy Buck and John Lugar wandered into the room and stood over by the window. Listening to Judge Hand, Slaight looked over at his friends. Their faces wore the weary frowns of firsties—guys who had spent four years at West Point and had pretty much seen and heard it all. But their frowns dissolved as the Judge's personal pain flooded the room. When the Judge left, Buck and Lugar hung around, waiting for Slaight's reaction. He remembered now that there had been literally nothing he could think of to say. He had walked over to his desk and torn up his resignation. The next day, the three of them walked together to Michie Stadium and stood in the June sun and threw their cadet caps high into the air in the traditional celebration signaling that they were no longer cadets but second lieutenants in the United States Army.
Slaight remembered he was standing there holding hands with his lover, Irit Dov, when Samantha Hand and Judge Hand walked up to congratulate him.
"David would have wanted it this way," Samantha said.
Judge Hand cleared his throat and did his best to hold back the tears welling up in his eyes. "I'm ... proud of you," he stammered. Then Samantha gave Second Lieutenant Slaight a quick kiss on the cheek and she and her father melted into the crowd surging around the new grads.
Irony upon irony. Now his wife, Sam walked with Lieutenant General Slaight as he strode across the grassy expanse of the Plain. Behind the barracks walls, he could hear the cadet companies forming up.
"A Companayyyy ... a-ten-SHUN! B Companayyyy ... a-ten-SHUN! C Companayyyy ... a-ten-SHUN!"
Soon the sunny exits of the sally ports through the barracks would be alight with the glistening buttons of cadet full dress gray coats as the Corps marched from the barracks and began the age-old tradition of passing in review for the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. It was an onerous task that Slaight had performed literally hundreds of times as a cadet, and now, across the years, the generations would connect once again on the Plain. This time, he would stand atop the reviewing stand and they would pass in review for him.
The cadet who had shaken the stony foundations of the rock-bound highland home had returned to find the place changed. As he watched the cadet battalions pound through the sally ports, he could see the occasional dark expanse of cadet neck where female hair was pinned under the full dress hat of the cadet parade uniform. The old tennis courts across from the library were gone, and Thayer Road no longer bisected the Plain.
But so much had remained the same. It was bloody stinking West Point hot, the way Slaight remembered it had been in the Septembers of his cadet years—the kind of heat that wilted the crease in cadet dress white trousers the moment they were put on; heat that caused the wool jackets of the full dress gray uniform to smell like a barnyard. He looked up at the gothic chapel, standing high above the barracks atop its rocky promontory like a medieval military fantasy. The stone barracks across the Plain from him were as stately and austere as he remembered them. As battalions came on line across the broad expanse of the Plain, the cadets themselves were still ruddy-cheeked and ramrod straight, and they marched with a proud precision that paid homage to the generations who had done exactly what they were doing so many, many times before them.
Four thousand cadets in a row of four regiments broken down into three battalions each stood at attention before him. Not for nothing, Slaight mused, was it called the Long Gray Line.
Slaight was standing to the right of General Edward Jay Meuller, the Chief of Staff of the Army. The Commandant, Brigadier General Gibson, stood to his left. The Cadet First Captain took the report from the Cadet Adjutant and spun around to face the reviewing stand.
"Sir, the Corps of Cadets is all present and accounted for!" he barked, as he executed a snappy salute with his saber. Slaight took a single step forward.
"Pass in review!" he commanded.
The First Captain wheeled around and shouted, "Pass in review!"
Starting with the First Battalion of the First Regiment, cadet commanders barked the orders that would send their respective units marching across the Plain in front of the reviewing stand. First came the Brigade Staff, followed by the First Regimental Staff, which preceded the First Battalion Staff, which led the First Battalion. Slaight, and indeed all of the officers on the reviewing stand and in the bleachers, stood and saluted as each battalion executed its snappy "Eyes ... RIGHT!"
General Meuller, a robust, barrel-chested man with bushy white eyebrows and twinkling blue eyes, waited until two battalions had passed before he nudged Slaight with his elbow and whispered, "I still can't get used to hearing a young woman give the command 'Battalion ... a-ten-shun.'"
Slaight chuckled. He had been the tactical officer of a cadet company in 1977, the year after women had first been admitted to West Point, and he had still been there in 1979 when the first female battalion commander shouted her first orders at a parade on the Plain. "It won't be long before one of these young women will be standing up there in Michie Stadium with four stars on her shoulders giving the graduation address, sir."
He heard a chuckle from General Meuller and caught a sideways glimpse of Gibson's face reddening beneath the visor of his cap.
"I want to be there when that happens," said General Meuller.
"I'll make sure you're invited, sir."
Just then the battalion immediately in front of the reviewing stand marched off and executed a column right, then proceeded down the Plain toward the west. Lying on the Plain where the battalion had stood was a cadet who had dropped from the heat.
"Still leave 'em on the Plain till it's over?" asked General Meuller, turning to General Gibson.
"Yes sir. Medics will be out there as soon as the last battalion passes in review."
"Happened to me when I was a plebe," said General Meuller. "Same kind of day. Walking out on that Plain was like stepping into a goddamned frying pan. Sweat was pourin' down my face, and I felt my knees shaking. Next thing I knew, I was on a stretcher. I took shit from the yearlings clear past Christmas."
Slaight stifled a laugh. "I always thought it was that damn full dress hat squeezing your head that did it," he whispered.
"There's another one dropped, sir," said Gibson, nodding at a second cadet facedown on the grass as another battalion marched off. The last battalion came on line, leaving a third cadet crumpled on the turf.
When the final battalion had passed in review and was headed back to the barracks, three teams of medics carried stretchers onto the Plain and began treating the prone cadets. Slaight invited General Meuller to stay for lunch in the mess hall, but as the general shook hands with the officers and wives who had joined them on the reviewing stand he begged off, citing a staff meeting he had to attend that afternoon to get ready for a White House briefing the next day. Slaight followed the Chief of Staff down the steps from the reviewing stand and stood there as Gibson escorted him to his staff car. Samantha joined him.
"Watch him," she snarled. "Gibson's going to escort him back to his plane." Sure enough, the Commandant climbed into the rear seat of the staff car next to General Meuller, and they watched as the car sped away toward the North Gate. "Asshole." Samantha spat the word between clenched teeth.
"Aww, c'mon, hon. He's got the Academy's best interests at heart," joked Slaight.
"Yeah, and bears use a Kohler toilet instead of the woods."
Slaight laughed. In the distance, he saw two medics help one of the fallen cadets to his feet. "C'mon," he said, taking Sam's hand. They started walking across the Plain toward the cadet who had dropped in front of the reviewing stand. There was a stretcher on the ground and two medics were bent over the cadet. One of them, a specialist with a mustache that struggled to cover his upper lip, making him look even younger than he probably was, had a look of panic on his face. Slaight broke into a run, Samantha close behind.
When they reached the medics, one of them was speaking excitedly into a handheld radio, calling for a doctor. Slaight looked down at the cadet. She was lying on her back, her eyes were open, and her face was drained of color. She opened her mouth, gave a little gasp, and shivered, as though she'd been hit with a blast of cold air. Then she was still. The medic with the mustache felt her pulse and pressed his ear close to her mouth.
"Cardiac arrest!" Quickly he began CPR. He pulled her head back and cleared her airway. Then he pinched closed her nostrils and started mouth-to-mouth. The other medic threw down the radio and started unbuttoning her full dress coat. He exposed her chest and started the rhythmic process of cardiac massage.
A siren sounded somewhere in the distance and grew louder. In a moment, an ambulance skidded to a halt next to them. Two medics and a doctor rushed forward carrying a portable defibrillator. The doctor, a young captain, rubbed the paddles together as the machine powered up. "Clear!" he shouted, placing the paddles on the sides of the young woman's chest. Her body jerked involuntarily as a jolt of electricity surged through her abdomen. The medic immediately restarted mouth-to-mouth while the doctor felt for a pulse. "Nothing. Let's try again." He rubbed the paddles together, watching the control panel of the defibrillator. A red light blinked off and a green light began flashing. "Clear!" he called. Then he gave the prostrate cadet another jolt.
Slaight squatted next to the cadet's body. Her eyes were glassy. He took her hand. Still kneeling, the doctor felt for a pulse, then he gently touched the shoulder of the medic. The medic stopped giving mouth-to-mouth. The doctor looked over at the Superintendent. He squinted into the bright sun and licked his lips. "She's gone, sir."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Full Dress Gray by Lucian K. Truscott IV. Copyright © 1998 Lucian Truscott Co. Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Interviews
On Wednesday, July 1, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Lucian K. Truscott IV, author of FULL DRESS GRAY.
Moderator: Welcome, Lucian Truscott! Thank you for joining us online tonight. How are you doing this summer evening?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I just took a shower and settled in. I've been out in my garden working steer manure into a large flower bed.
PAc87@aol.com from XX: Have you been working on this novel -- at least in your head -- since DRESS GRAY?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Naw, just for the last year or so. I got the idea in the middle of the night just about this time last year. I woke up and said out loud, "What if Ry Slaight became the supe? That's a book."
Andrew from Cherry Point, NC: Did you have any idea that West Point and military institutions in general would have changed as much as they have?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: West Point and the other academies have been changing steadily for almost 200 years, in West Point's case anyway. When I was a cadet, they did away with reveille formation, and the older grads thought the walls were going to come down. They didn't then, and they didn't when they admitted women in 1976, another time the old grads thought the world would end.
Mike from MMuntz@yahoo.com: What type of research did you do for this book?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I've kept abreast of what's going on at West Point over the years, and I contacted officers, grads, and cadets online when I had specific questions about policies at West Point.
JWC901@aol.com from NJ: Dear Mr. Truscott, I am a fan of your writing and I am also a fan of your editorial writing. What do you think about the ban on assault rifles? Also, are you a fan of Charlton Heston? Do you think he will take the NRA in the right direction?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I don't think the ban on assault weapons goes far enough. I believe that assault weapons belong in military weapons rooms, under lock and key, and under the supervision of a company commander and a weapons officer, not in people's homes. I have no idea what Charlton Heston will do with the NRA, but I wasn't encouraged by his comments at their recent convention.
Timothy from Bastrop, LA: I hate to get political, but what are your thoughts on the current President of the United States? Are you a fan?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I'm not a fan of Clinton, but I've got no problem whatsoever with the fact that he "dodged the draft." Twenty-six million young men came of draft age during the Vietnam War era. Do you know how many were actually drafted? About five million. Do you how many actually served in Vietnam? About three million. Clinton is only one of a great many men of my generation who opposed that war and did something about their opposition by not serving in the Army that was fighting it.
Veronica from Columbia, SC: I'm curious to find out what you think about the Citadel and women being admitted into the Citadel. Thanks!
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I think that the fight the Citadel and VMI put up against admitting women was reprehensible. Women have been at the other national service academies for over 20 years. Many of the young men who are in the Citadel and VMI applied to West Point and didn't get accepted or didn't get an appointment. If they had made it to West Point, they'd have had female classmates automatically. I don't know what the big problem is about serving alongside women at a service academy.
Tom from NYC: Were you satisfied with the TV version of DRESS GRAY? Any plans to bring FULL DRESS GRAY to the screen?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I was moderately satisfied with DRESS GRAY on TV. We've had offers on FULL DRESS GRAY and have turned at least one of them down. I think it'll end up being a miniseries, just like the other book, only this time I will write the teleplay.
Dorian from Hartford, CT: I would really like to hear you go off on the new president of the NRA.... What are your thoughts on Charlton Heston? Would you like to go head to head with "Moses" in a debate regarding stricter gun-control laws?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I would meet "Moses" anywhere, including the Mount of Olives, to debate what has happened to the out-of-control gun culture in this country. When I was on the "Today" show with Tanya Metaska of the NRA, she said she supported taking eight- to 11-year-olds on so-called practical-shooting courses and teaching them to shoot high-powered handguns at human silhouette targets. This to me is madness. I started shooting a .22 when I was 12 years old, and I still own two guns, but let me tell you this The only human silhouette targets I ever shot at were in the Army and at West Point. That's where this kind of shooting belongs, not on these "practical shooting" courses, where, interestingly enough, one of the boys from Arkansas was trained at age ten.
Noah from Austin, TX: What are your thoughts about drug use in the military? Do you think it exists? I personally don't think military folk should be taking drugs. What about drinking? I have seen one too many armed forces individuals have too much to drink and then try to take their fighting to the bars. Not to knock USMC, but I stay away from Marines who are drinking....
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Drug use was very, very bad when I was in the Army in the '70s. They've worked hard on reducing it, and they've succeeded.
Charles from Washington, D.C.: Was there anything in particular that inspired you to write this book?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I thought it was time to revisit Ry Slaight and his career, since by this time, he would be a general officer. I was also looking forward to another book contract. That has usually been a major part of my "inspiration" as a writer. It's what I do for a living. It's my job, and has been for more than 30 years now.
Snitch from Jefferson City: I saw you on the "Today" show, and I have to say I was surprised to see you speaking against the NRA, only because I immediately assumed that all people in the military were all for "the right to bear arms." Do you think this rash of school shootings, all done at the hands of young men, could have been prevented with stricter legislation?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I don't think you can prevent crimes from taking place, but you can certainly make them more difficult to commit. The fact that these two boys had fairly easy access to a large quantity of guns is a major factor in this crime. One of the grandfathers of one of the boys owned more than 50 weapons. This is the approximate weapons strength of an Army infantry platoon. It's patently ridiculous for individuals to be as heavily armed as an entire platoon of infantry. If the relatives of those boys had locked up their guns safely, the way they are locked up in the Army, the boys wouldn't have had easy access to the weapons, and the crime most probably would not have been committed. But of course, the NRA opposes any laws which would require weapons to be locked up. Makes one hell of a lot of sense, doesn't it? The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard keep their weapons under lock and key, but the NRA thinks that civilians shouldn't have to.
John from Class of '89: Have you gone back to West Point since your books have come out? What was the reception like?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Yeah, I've been back. Some people like my books, some don't. But I've gotten very, very good responses so far from grads who have read FULL DRESS GRAY, which is encouraging.
Amy from Trenton, NJ: Hi. I haven't read DRESS GRAY. Do I need to read DRESS GRAY to read FULL DRESS GRAY? Would you recommend that I read DRESS GRAY first?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: It's not necessary to read DRESS GRAY first; FULL DRESS GRAY is a stand-alone story that gives you some background from DRESS GRAY. But I would strongly recommend that you run out to Barnes & Noble and buy all of my books, and buy some extra ones to give away as Christmas and birthday presents.
Samuel Riesenberger from Boca Raton: Since this book deals with the murder of a female cadet, I wonder if you at all deal with the issue of gender and sexual harassment in the military? I haven't read FULL DRESS GRAY yet, but I look forward to it.
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Yeah, it deals with sex harassment, but I'm not going to tell you how. I ain't giving away no plot details on this forum. You all have got to run out and buy the book and find out that stuff for yourselves.
Louis from Jax Beach: How did you get your first break in publishing? How did you get your first book published?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I started writing letters to the editor of The Village Voice when I was 19 years old. One day I wrote a long letter, and they ran it on the front page and sent me $80. I was astonished. It rolled on from there. Publishers were after me to write a book for about seven years before I wrote DRESS GRAY. I finally got tired of traveling 200 days a year, working as a journalist, and decided to settle down and write a book.
Tom from NYC: Me again. Were you not happy with Gore Vidal's screenplay [of DRESS GRAY]?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I wouldn't call myself "happy." I would say more along the lines of it was okay. He didn't try to change the story much, but he changed a lot of dialogue. Interestingly, in the scenes which were most dramatic and key to the story, he took the dialogue straight from the book.
Noah from Austin: When you say drug use was bad back in the day, I am curious to find out what type of drugs. Alcohol? Marijuana? Worse?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: During the late '60s, early '70s, the Army had a 10-15 percent heroin-addiction rate, due to its easy availability in Vietnam. But it didn't stop there. Many more guys used marijuana and other kinds of psychedelic drugs. Alcohol has always been a problem for the Army, but they have learned to deal with it much better these days.
Richard from New Orleans, LA: I love the cover of this book! Did you have any say in how the final cover turned out?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I suggested that the cover have a female cadet in the FULL DRESS GRAY uniform, but I didn't design the cover, and I was not consulted beyond that one opinion I expressed. I like the cover, too. I especially like the photo in the back flap of the cover...some guy I think I recognize.
Nancy from San Diego: Will you ever write a nonfiction book -- possibly about your family or maybe about gun control? Have you ever thought about that?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I've thought about writing a novel about my grandfather and grandmother, taking them from the frontier in Texas when they first married, on through his career in the Army, to when he was deputy director of the CIA. They were fascinating people, and the story of their lives is really pretty incredible. But no, I'm not going to write a nonfiction book on gun control. I'll just drive Charlton Heston crazy with op-ed articles and appearances on Fox News and CBS and NBC. That should keep him busy.
Darla from Madison, WI: Will you be continuing this series? What made you decide to go back?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I don't know if I'll write another Dress Gray book. I guess if I wait another 20 years, I'd have to call it DRESS VIAGRA.
John from Trenton, NJ: Do you think we are living in a time of peace and that the United States will not get into any wars in the near future? Where do you foresee the next time the U.S. will have to use military force?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: They used force yesterday in Iraq. We're always going to need an army, because it's often more effective to put out regional conflicts before they rage into world wars. We'll be doing something with guns and bullets, I would expect, between now and the turn of the century.
Derek from Michigan: Do you prefer writing fiction or nonfiction? I love reading your essays and editorials.
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I like writing fiction, but I also enjoy writing for The New York Times. The thing is, they'll only let you on the op-ed page twice a year. Maybe you all should start a letter-writing campaign, urging them to give me a monthly column. That might wake them up.
John from Irvington, NY: In your opinion, what is the best military fiction book ever written?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I don't have opinions like "best" or "worst." The thing about writing is this It's so difficult that I rather hate it when people say someone is "the best" or "the worst."
Huge Truscott Fan from Earth: Was there any reason in particular that you waited to so long to write the next Gray book?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: It quite literally didn't occur to me until last year. When it finally occurred to me, I went to New York and got a contract from Morrow and sat down and wrote the book. I'm getting ready to sign a new contract for an international thriller...something reminiscent of THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, but not exactly that kind of story.
Peter from Springfield, VA: Are you touring for this book? Will you be coming to Washington, D.C.?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I'll be in D.C. on the 20th and 21st of July, and I'll be doing a signing/reading at 7pm on the 21st at Borders Books in Pentagon City.
Tim from St. Louis, MO: Do you think that West Point is maintaining its reputation of excellence?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: Yep, I sure do.
Tim from Cardiff, CA: Who are some of your favorite contemporary authors?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: I like Richard Ford a lot. And I like my books. I find them fascinating to write, although I haven't read one of my own books in years. Not even DRESS GRAY. I didn't read it before I started FULL DRESS GRAY.
Moderator: Thank you, Lucian Truscott! Best of luck with your new book, FULL DRESS GRAY. Do you have any closing comments for the online audience?
Lucian K. Truscott IV: They told me I was on from eight to ten. I guess they told me wrong. My closing comment is Get out there and buy my books and tell your friends! I've got a garden to grow, and I need money for flowers!
