One Beats the Bush by Riall Nolan is a fast read, an intriguing, twisty, action-packed plot involving a small cast of well-moulded characters.

Max Donovan, a Vietnam flies back to San Francisco after he’s informed that his old friend Fat Freddie Fields has been arrested for murder. The DA seems hell-bent on a quick conviction and so is barely interested in investigating the crime. Acquiring the bail money meant messing with local drug dealers, but Donovan gets his mate out of jail, it being too much of a reminder of their past in a North Vietnamese POW camp.

Donovan’s only clue to solving the murder seems to be in New Guinea and that involves a flight, local politics and crime, smugglers, weapons, and hostile hill tribes. Donovan and his female supporter fly into a hill tribe area to find a helicopter crash site and possible clues to the murder back in San Francisco, encounter a corrupt US missionary but also find the necessary information… and by great luck and immense skill they make it out of New Guinea and back to the US just in time blow apart a smuggling operation that of course involves that corrupt DA.

It’s a fast-paced plot, the characters are likeable when they need to be and the whole story ends with a satisfying climax.