Rewards and Reviews

Rick DeStefanis’ novel, The Birdhouse Man, was awarded the prestigious 2022 Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction. Readers have rated it 4.7 out of 5 Stars on both the Amazon and Goodreads Sites. Order your copy now and find out why.

The Gomorrah Principle, by Rick DeStefanis is a riveting tale written with the skill and precision. In this genre blend, DeStefanis proves that he is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world. The plot is well crafted, and the pacing is spot-on. Once people read it, I think word of mouth will make DeStefanis a must-read for anyone who enjoys recent history, war stories, mysteries, and romance.
—Judge, 22^nd Annual Writer’s Digest Book Awards

Valley of the Purple Hearts is the winner of the 2017 Best Indie Book Award for Literary Mainstream Fiction. Read more here.

The Gomorrah Principle Reviews

I would have to say it is one of the best books I have read in years
By Hirsberg “Pink Tower OB” on April 16, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
From the very first chapter I could not put this book down. I would have to say it is one of the best books I have read in years. The book is beautifully written and very suspenseful . I read this book while I was on vacation at the beach and each day I could not wait to get back to the book. The characters and the settings we so well described I felt like I knew the people and the places. I could tell a lot of research went into the writing of this book. I can not wait for his next book. A+++ A 5 star!

Great story of friendship, love & war!
By Chris on April 3, 2015
Format: Paperback
Life jumps off the pages! Whether its the hills of Tennessee, the jungles of ‘Nam, Music City USA or Saigon there is excitement and drama to keep you turning the pages. I found myself wondering if Brady would ever love again, who his real enemies were and if he would discover what happened to his childhood best friend.
I was instantly hooked. Brady, the good-ole country boy from the Tennessee hills, grew up learning to hunt and knowing right from wrong in the hard-working blue-collar mining country. Leaving his girl friend to find out about his best friend’s (her brother) death makes us ache for him and her both. Understanding our God-given tendencies gives Brady the edge he needs in landing in a position to find out what he wants to know only to put his life at risk.
I highly recommend getting a copy and joining Brady Nash on his quest through love, war and government espionage to find out what happened to Duff Cowan. Thanks Rick DeStefanis for this exciting book!

love, etc.
By michele on March 9, 2015
Format: Paperback
The author’s thought-provoking mention of Richard Connell’s, “The Most Dangerous Game,” offered the audience a literary comparison. Connell is unquestionably known for his ability to successfully blend literary devices and use various types of genre to capture his audience attention. Rick DeStefanis offers a similar composition which allows him to appeal to a broader, nonspecific, audience base. Whether or not, you are attracted to war, mystery, action-adventure, suspense, thriller, love, etc., DeStefanis brings it home in his all-captivating, spellbound, masterpiece, “The Gomorrah Principle.” –Michele C.

Best Vietnam experience in print
By Steve Scattum on April 21, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition: Verified Purchase
Excellent in all categories, suspense personified thru out book, a must read, one of the best I’ve read for sure Super!

Melody Hill Reviews by Amazon.com Readers

Take a journey to Vietnam by way of Melody Hill May 6, 2015
By Carol Carlson
Format: Kindle Edition
Driving to work this past Monday, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been away for a long time, like on an extended trip to some exotic place. I felt disconnected to everything around me. But I had not been anywhere. In fact, I’d spent the weekend at home reading Melody Hill. That’s when I realized that it was Vietnam I was thinking about. I felt like I’d been there, and now needed to readjust to being home and going to work. All day my mind would drift, wondering what was happening to Duff, Roland, and the rest of the guys back in Vietnam.

Okay, perhaps I was losing my mind. But this is how realistic Rick DeStefanis’s writing feels. At the time, I was only halfway through the book, and it was difficult to pull myself out of the story and go about my normal life. I’d say that’s a rare kind of writing talent, since I’m not commonly known to confuse my suburban life with the sweltering jungles of Vietnam, circa 1967.

As the prequel to Rick’s first novel, The Gomorrah Principle, Melody Hill is the satisfying answer to all that was previously uncertain or unexplained, introducing the characters as they are just becoming the people we came to know in the original story. This is exactly the ‘back story’ a prequel should be. But this one is so much more. In its own right, Melody Hill is a war story (much more so than The Gomorrah Principle), it’s a love story – two love stories actually, it’s a coming of age, finding your way, good vs evil, who do you trust, band of brothers, family loyalty, searching for truth kind of story. Read more ›

you always get great writing. That writing makes you feel as if … May 1, 2015
By Ellen Morris Prewitt
Format: Kindle Edition
From the first sentence of Melody Hill—”Duff Coleridge stood over a freshly killed deer, one he hadn’t meant to kill.”—you know things will not proceed as expected. With author Rick DeStefanis, you always get great writing. That writing makes you feel as if you’re in Vietnam, living the dangers along with Duff. We’re there when Duff meets the gorgeous Lynn Dai Bouchet (“a woman as beautiful and complicated as the country she called her own.”) and the evil Spartan. Duff quickly finds himself entangled in something he doesn’t understand, where he must navigate not just the dangers of combat, but the traps of corruption and betrayal as well.
For those who have read The Gomorrah Principle, Melody Hill is an opportunity to again spend time with Brady and Lacey, getting to know their relationship better. For those new to the series, after reading Melody Hill, you’ll want to quickly run out and find The Gomorrah Principle to keep the story going.

Thoroughly enjoyed it! May 4, 2015
By Myates
Format: Paperback
Having read The Gomorrah Principle a few weeks ago, I was delighted to find that Rick DeStefanis has completed the prequel to it. Melody Hill recounts the story of Duff Coleridge and the swirling web of truths and lies that define the U.S. participation in the Vietnam war. Duff’s unintentional venture into the corruption that existed amid that “war on communism” parallels the manner in which evil often lies its way into the lives of “good” people. The contrasts seen in the life of Melody Hill and the hamlets of Vietnam add tension as the plot unfolds to reveal how completely foreign this warring country is to Duff, yet his ability to see some of the people he meets as honest and true men show his acceptance of the Vietnamese people as equals whose lives have value.
I thoroughly enjoyed Melody Hill as well as The Gomorrah Principle and look forward to this Mississippi writer’s next fictional adventure.

DeStefanis hits it out of the park… May 4, 2015
By Brian
Format: Kindle Edition
It Is always hard to write a sequel as good as the first and a prequel is even harder, but DeStefanis delivers a great read. Even though he had to write within the time constraints of The Gomorrah Principle, he delivers a great back story to Duff, one of the original characters and does so with believability and that is something I pick apart in most thrillers. If it is not believable then I lose interest, but this book really details the early days with multiple story lines and most of all, we find out just how Duff finds his way, for better or worse. His vivid descriptions make it easy for the reader to imagine the surroundings as if you are there and you can really connect with the characters. Even though this series is listed as military thrillers, the story is about more. It’s about life, morals, devotion and love. You won’t regret this book. I actually read it twice. Job well done.

Read These Reviews on Amazon

By Tom Mayer

Mississippi author Rick DeStefanis with the seventh book in his Vietnam War Series. ’Specter of Betrayal’ is a sequel to 2022’s offering, ‘The Ghost.’

If Rick DeStefanis isn’t on the plains writing westerns — “Rawlins: No Longer Young” kicked off that series in 2018 — you’ll likely find him immersed in environs similar to Cuc Phuong, Vietnam’s oldest national park and a dense jungle of primitive forests inhabited by mosquitoes, dense heat, exotic animals and, once upon a time, predators intent on killing American soldiers.

The tally of DeStefanis’ Vietnam War Series now comes to seven, with the most recent, “Specter of Betrayal: The Ghost II,” arising as a haunting sequel to 2023’s “The Ghost.”

DeStefanis doesn’t just write war stories. He writes war stories laced with meditations on the human condition, exploring themes of guilt, redemption and, especially in these last two books, ghosts of the past.

So it is with “Specter of Betrayal.” But before we get to that book, a caveat from the author: “This is the second book in the two-part story about ‘The Ghost.’ If you haven’t read book one, I strongly recommend that you read it first. Much of what is written in this second book is a continuation of that story, and it will make this one more understandable and enjoyable,” DeStefanis writes in a note to readers.

In other words, you’ll have to do some homework before you get to Book II, and that’s a good thing because this is what I published about Book I, “The Ghost,” a couple of years ago:

‘The Ghost’

Rick DeStefanis writes his own brands of fiction — Southern, Western and military — from his home in North Mississippi, but slide into any one of his much-praised series, and you’re anywhere but in the Magnolia State.

The most recent of those is “The Ghost,” the sixth book in DeStefanis’ Vietnam War canon. Based on true events from during that war, the series has been compared favorably with the likes of early Vietnam writers such as Tim O’Brien (“The Things They Carried”) and James Webb (“Field of Fire”), and it’s likely the author’s early 1970’s experience as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division that so accurately flavors his humanizing stories.

“The Ghost,” though, isn’t quite like any of those earlier offerings. Easily the best of the six — all but the first two, ‘The Gomorrah Principle’ (2013) and ‘Melody Hill’ (2015) are standalone novels — DeStefanis textures this military fiction with Native American spirituality, conceptualizing a harrowing descent into the war’s, and country’s, inner bowels.

Prompted by his father, second lieutenant Martin Shadows visits his Lakota Sioux grandfather just before he departs for Vietnam. Shadows will be in-country as a military intelligence officer, and so foresees little of the danger new officers typically combat. His grandfather — a man he had met only once before, and then as a child — foretells a different future, four visions that cast Shadows in the fiery light of enemy conflict.

The rational soldier discounts the visit with his elder, but being immediately called into a secret mission upon arriving in Vietnam sets his grandfather’s foreshadows alive: Exploits with a North Vietnamese spy, isolation in a North Vietnamese prison and other increasingly horrific events prove the truth of his grandfather’s foresight.

“There are many ways to find a man’s deepest fears,” Shadows is told by a commandant in Vietnam. If only he had listened to his grandfather, Shadows will come to realize, he might not have had to discover this on his own. Set during the Vietnam era, “The Ghost” is a novel for today — both a mixture of superstition and mysticism, and a heralding addition to the reality of American war fiction. And so we turn to book two, a worthy successor to that lead-in.

’Specter of Betrayal’

Haunted by the desperation of the Montagnards, Shadows is drawn back to Vietnam. These indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam participated heavily in the Vietnam War and were recruited by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and its American and Australian allies. And paid the price for their alliance.

Given the close similarities between the spiritual and physical heritages between the Lakota-Sioux and Montagnards, Shadows feels no other choice but to return to the battlefield to help the people he felt he left behind. When he unearths a deep betrayal against those he’s come to rescue, the fire turns “friendly” and it’s up to the officer, amid airstrikes and treachery from his own superiors and supposed protectors, to lead the Montagnards to an American safe zone.

As with his previous offerings, the pacing of “Specter” is unflagging and DeStefanis doesn’t shy away from the brutal realities of combat with scenes built to emphasize the horror of war and the psychological toll it can take on those immersed in it.

Couple this with the author’s vivid sensory capture of the war — you can smell gasoline as the thudding pulse of helicopter blades resonate throughout the canopy — and the result is a novel that pays tribute not only to those who served in Vietnam and elsewhere, but to the lingering effects of betrayal as the lines between friend and foe blur — and loyalties are tested to the extreme.

Reach reviewer Tom Mayer at tmayer@cullmantimes.com.

Rick DeStefanis

The Gomorrah Principle Reviews

Recent Posts

Mississippi author DeStefanis returns with ‘The Ghost’ sequel