Generals Daughter Book Review
Generals Daughter by Nelson Demille. An intriguing book that revolves around murder.
The story opens up with Anne Campbell, who is the daughter of General Campbell. Anne has been brought up as the perfect military daughter who earns her spot in the military as a psychologist. For the love of the army in the family dating back to his grandfather, he decides to live the military life.
Later she is murdered with a possible indication of rape. Her murder unravels the mysteries and dark secrets of her underlying life in the military base. Undercover CID Paul Brenner, who is assigned to her murder case, and rape specialist Cynthia Sunhill finds out about the undisclosed life that Anne Campbell lived. With possible occurrences of trying to whore every senior colonel within the base, Anne Campbell is thought to be trying to annoy and avenge something more cynical as it may seem.
His murder on the 6th riffle range draws a lot of tension in the base, and also, being the general’s daughter, it is of an urgent need to find the perpetrator of her murder. Her murder resembles strange strangulation, which is linked to sexual pleasures and at the same time seems to be rape. Her body is found naked with no form of penetration. The murder appears to have been conducted while not displaying little to no evidence linking the murderer.
Later on, forensic evidence (scalp of hair) is discovered on the latrine not far from the scene. Forensics tend to identify it to Colonel Moore. This being the only suspect with a lot much more, it is not clear who it might be.
Also, with tension rising on the side of CID Brenner to make an arrest or else the FBI would take up the case, Brenner buys time in the belief that there is more to the murder than it may seem, and many officers are involved in the case. CID Brenner and Cynthia take up the issue and try to link anybody possibly to nail the murderer. After holding investigations and interrogation to understand the deceased, Brenner and Cynthia dives deep into the world of murdered Anne Campbell, who seems to be after avenging something.
After visiting the residence of Anne, Brenner later finds out about a secret dark basement in Anne’s room with nude photos of different people and names on a list. With this, Brenner and Cynthia believe the deceased (Anne Campbell) had some strange sexual nerd experience related to her previous rape experience.
Still trying to find enough evidence to nail colonel Moore, Brenner finds other strange acts that Anne had been a culprit. Anne had been sleeping around with married colonels and military officers who, among most of them, were of senior ranks next to her father, General Campbell. Most of the senior colonels with positions close to his father have been her victim. After a thorough investigation, Brenner and Sunhill realize that what happened would most definitely be an act of revenge by Anne Campbell towards his father.
The revenge arises from the underlying fact that General Campbell did not find justice for his daughter. The perpetrators seem to be free after such an unlawful act against humanity. The evil act had occurred to Anne Campbell during her training periods at Camp Buckner, West Points field. The General thought that the action would jeopardize his career and that of the army. He also got authority from “above” not to attempt justice for the action since it could endanger the whole army.
General Campbell says, “I am not blaming my superiors for putting pressure on me. It was wrong what they did, but the ultimate decision to cooperate in the cover-up was mine. It thought I was doing what I did for the good and valid reasons — for Anne and the army, but in the final analysis, they were not good reasons, and I was selling out my daughter for myself” (Nelson Demille 374). From this excerpt, we see the General feels sorry for his actions and is what seems to be the root cause of all these problems and the murder in question.
Later on, Brenner uncovers through the secrets, and his evidence from the investigation ties Colonel Kent to the murder. It is found that Colonel Kent had sexual relations with Anne Campbell, and from the notes retrieved from Anne’s diary and personal computer, they state otherwise about Kent.
Colonel Kent was in a lousy relationship with Anne and had been on various occasions roughing her on that matter. He had even gone to lengths to raping her once in her house and roughing her boyfriend.
With Anne not comfortable with the scenario, she emails Mrs. Kent about her relations with Kent. With this and trails of forensics evidence tying Kent to the scene of the murder, He commits suicide in front of CID Brenner and Cynthia Sunhill.
Generals’ daughter by Nelson Demille is worth a read.
