Triangle

Triangle by Teri White is a suspense thriller and contemporary noir novel about two men who meet during the Vietnam War and form a bond that inevitably leads to their destruction. The main characters are Mac, a gambling addict and soldier, and Johnny Griffith, a shell-shocked comrade, as they attempt to navigate life after the war and find themselves indebted to the mob. The book was originally published in 1982, and recently re-released by the publisher Open Media.
 
The story begins when Mac meets Johnny Griffith. Mac's full name is Alexander McCarthy, and he was raised as an orphan before joining the military and participating in the war in Vietnam. One day, Mac is walking with his patrol when they find a shell-shocked boy, barely of age, who can hardly remember his own name. The boy is Johnny Griffith, and he was found at the edge of the site of the Tan Pret massacre, which he certainly witnessed and may or may not have participated in. Though many suggest leaving the boy behind because of his broken mind, Mac knows how it feels to be abandoned, and takes Johnny on as a kind of foster child for the rest of the war.
 
Together, Mac and Johnny manage to survive the war, and find themselves together back in America, lost and traumatized by the events they witnessed. Johnny is particularly broken, and has become deeply protective of Mac, who he sees as a father figure and his savior. Unfortunately for Johnny, Mac has a serious gambling addiction, and responds to the trauma of the war by blowing thousands and thousands of dollars.
 
Mac isn't just deep in debt – he owes money to the wrong kind of guys. He has managed to rack up debt with the local mafia, and the real conflict of the story begins when two mobsters show up at the house where Mac lives with Johnny to collect on their overdue payments. Johnny, whose rage has been repressed for all these years, sees the men preparing to kill Mac, takes out a gun, and shoots them both dead.
 
Mac becomes frantic, trying to figure out how to remedy the situation. The mob knows who killed their guys – they come looking for Mac outside the house, and demand that Mac make it up to them. In response, Mac offers up Johnny, whose shell-shock has turned him into the perfect hitman. Johnny is nearly catatonic, obedient to Mac, and seems to feel nothing after committing violent crimes – instead, he just develops sudden, unexplained cravings for strawberry ice cream. Mac offers up Johnny as a hitman, with Mac serving as his guide. The mobsters accept, and Mac and Johnny find themselves working as fixers.
 
At first, their work goes relatively smoothly. Mac finds the guys that the mob needs offed, and Johnny lines up the sights and shoots. But while Mac thinks of Johnny as a well-tuned killing machine, Johnny isn't nearly as obedient or as stable as Mac seems to believe. As the novel progresses, Mac begins to lose control of the monster he created, and the destruction that Johnny is able to wreak is more terrifying than anything the men saw overseas in Vietnam.
 
In the second part of the novel, a hit goes wrong, and Johnny accidentally murders an undercover cop. Following the story of the undercover cop's partner Simon, the novel transforms into a police procedural, where the grieving partner throws his life away to find the man who murdered his best friend. This inevitably brings Simon, Mac, and Johnny together for the final section of the novel. The overarching theme here: there are no good guys.
 
Teri White is a prolific crime novelist and zine maker. Some of her novels include Murder is My Business, Fault Lines, and the Sisters in Crime series. White primarily writes thrillers and mysteries. She also works as a publisher. Triangle was White's first novel, and it won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Mystery in 1983.