The Last Detail by Darryl Ponicsan [1971 HARDCOVER] • The Dial Press

The Last Detail by Darryl Ponicsan

FIRST BOOK CLUB EDITION [1971] THE DIAL PRESS

Hardcover with dust jacket in excellent condition.

Small creased spot to top-front edge of dust jacket;  otherwise excellent; housed in a new archival quality jacket protector.

Book itself is near mint and reads like new.

"The Last Detail" was Darryl Ponicsan's first novel and it catapulted him into the front rank of American novelists. It was made into the 1973 film starring Jack Nicholson, and has become a classic of the Golden Age of American cinema. 

During the height of the Vietnam War, Billy Bad-Ass and Mule Mulhall, two career sailors in transit in Norfolk, awaiting permanent orders, are given a "chaser" duty. Their assignment is to escort and deliver Larry Meadows, an 18-year-old sailor, from Norfolk to Portsmouth, N.H., where he is to serve an eight year sentence in the brig. It's good duty, on the face of it, until the two old salts realize the injustice of the sentence and are oddly affected by the true innocence of their prisoner, even though he is guilty as charged. Failure, or refusal, to carry out their duty is never a question, no matter how much they hate the detail or how wrong it seems, and yet something must be done, some gesture made in order to help their hapless prisoner survive the long ordeal he faces, and to purge their own sense of shame.