Rating: 
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: "Special Prisoned" refers to the designation the Japanese used for pilots captured during World War ll. These prisoners were considered war criminals and treated to unspeakable cruelty and deprivation. John Quincy Watson was captured after his plane went down on a bombing run over Tokyo. Taken into captivity, he comes face to face with T. Tashimoto, the Hyena. The Hyena seems to delight in humiliating and torturing the prisoners, especially those like Watson, with red hair. Watson is forced to watch as those around him are abused and killed . He is permanently marked by the constant beatings recieved at the hands of martial arts expert Hyena. As he and his fellow prisoners struggle to survive, a deep hatred of his captor festers and eventually errupts. Years later a chance sighting in the DFW airport triggers all the horrific memories and sends Watson,now a Methodist bishop, on a quest to settle one last score. The story that follws blends both the present and horrific flashbacks to explain how a man of God can be overcome by such extreme hatred and a desire for vengence. This book rang true for me, for a friend of our family had been interred for four years by the Japanese in a camp of foreign civilians. He was only 10 years old at the time (much like Empire of the Sun) and was forever marked by the cruelty of his captors. A chance meeting across a boardroom table, years later in New York, errupted into a similar situation. Jim Lehrer has been able to balance a compelling story of man's search for redemption and revenge, and the price it extracts.
Rating: 
Summary: Lehrer should not have bothered
Review: I am a big fan of Jim Lehrer, the author, at least and am very disappointed with this book. The book is a very compelling indictment of the treatment of prisoners during wartime, especially those held by the Japanese. These chapters are vividly told and unsettling to read. That's where the good part ends. Unfortunately the moral dilemma, or question, presented by the author, is weakly supported and ambiguously resolved. The main character, Bishop Watson, guided by his own sense of morality understand the price he must pay for the taking a life. But the author chooses to played it out in a farcical trial. In real life the prosecutor himself would have probably requested an appeal on behalf of the defendant, based on an incredibly inept defense mounted by the bishop's attorney. The book reads more like a short story with lots of padding. I'm sure it would make a great TV movie. Sorry Jim.
Rating: 
Summary: An Epic Tale Missed
Review: I am disappointed in James Lehrer's latest book, particularly after the rave reviews it has received and the boost it won recently on the Don Imus show. Mr. Lehrer had a great idea for what should have been an epic novel, covering the emotional consequences of being a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp near the end of World War II and the complexity of the Japanese character that can hide true viciousness and atrocities towards other humans under a present day manner of politeness and deference. The Special Prisoner does not come near reaching the depths of the real story that could be told (the book is only 227 pages) and reads as though the author was in a hurry to finish it. Where dialogue should have been used the author substitues an overview of what passes as conversation. Many of the characters who appear in the book are never fully developed, so the reader comes away not feeling he has ever gotten into the story. The book has several intersting twists and turns, but, like its characters, they are just put out there without any real effort at development. This could have been an excellent historically based read, much like James Webb's "The Emperor's General", but I think the opportunity was lost on what appears to have been a rush to finish it shortly after the start.
Rating: 
Summary: Death over Degradation
Review: I enjoyed very much reading "The Special Prisoner" and found it quite challenging. Early on, author Jim Lehrer forces the reader to reconsider the morality of American firebombing of civilian populations during WWII, which most Americans call "the good war." This reconsideration and the chain of violent events involving the book's bomber pilot hero. Quincy Watson, raise a set of serious questions that Americans (and most peoples) refuse to face squarely. Is violence a moral response to injustice? Are soldiers, especially so-called heroes, more demeaned by their deeds than ennobled? Does righteous violence ever end? Is violence ever righteous? Do "just" wars produce just results? Are Americans better people than their evil enemies? Are societies so organized that they can only survive by condemning their citizens to sporadic savagery? Is evil at the heart of human nature? "The Special Prisoner" takes a bleak perspective on these issues. Author Lehrer seems to care about individual human beings but to despise human nature. He appears to understand when a person chooses to die rather than live with the consequences of hatred. Some humans beings are willing to die but not to kill. Some accept death before degradation. But I think Lehrer also knows that heroic suicides - like that of Rick Allison, Quincy's trusted advisor - do nothing to improve the human lot. Quincy Watson, the "special prisoner," exposes himself to horrific violence in a Japanese POW camp by committing the horrific violence of dropping incendiary bombs on Tokyo before his plane is downed. Though many victims of war and violence do not deserve their pain, Quincy is both torturer and tortured. The victims of his bombs have the oxygen sucked out of their lungs even as skin and muscle burn off their bones. As a POW, Quincy is beaten into a lifetime of crippled pain by his Japanese captors. He's also rendered impotent which suggests that a humanity caught in cyclical suffering and killing will not survive. After a difficult postwar rehabilitation, Quincy rises to a long career as a revered Methodist clergyman but discovers late in life that he's not saved. He worked hard at forgiving his Japanese torturers, but never thought to seek forgiveness from his Japanese victims. Not until the novel's end does he face the the possibility of evil in himself, and readers will be eager to learn how he handles the confrontation. There's a variety of villians in this story, from the sadistic Japanese "Hyena" who tortures and kills American flyers to the iron-willed Henry Howell, leader of the American POWs, who teaches his fellow prisoners to survive on a diet of hate and the expectation of revenge. Survive to fight is Howell's message and those who fail to listen die. Quincy survives. Fifty years after the war, Quincy and Howell are rejoined in a second struggle for survival which darkly echoes the unlearned lessons of their war years. Religion has an important role in this novel. God doesn't.
Rating:
Summary: A most unusual revenge tale
Review: I recalled the line from "The Wolfman" after reading this well written tale ("even a man with a pure heart" or something to that effect). An unforgetable read. Past sins may be forgiven, but never forgotten. Get this one.
Rating:
Summary: A most unusual revenge tale
Review: I recalled the line from "The Wolfman" after reading this well written tale ("even a man with a pure heart" or something to that effect). An unforgetable read. Past sins may be forgiven, but never forgotten. Get this one.
Rating:
Summary: The Return To Innocence
Review: In light of the rather vivid pictorial representation we conceive from the description in the novel "The Special Prisoner" by Jim Lehrer, a more conflicting issue is presented. As a POW in the ruthless hands of an unremorseful Lieutenant Tashimoto, John Quincy Watson is faced with a trial of self-reliance that he would remain the product of for his entire life. The mechanical structure of the novel enables the readers to reflect back and forth from past to present in attempts to establish connections towards Watson both pre and post. A brief overview of the more conflicting fundamentals in the book refers to the actions of an older John Quincy Watson having survived the hands of Tashimoto 50 years before. A factor of revenge funds the actions that in the end fuel the fire of murder. In the mist of all this suffering and refutation, John Quincy refines his focus as the road to closure is reached as he once thought 50 years before. In that, the novel recollects the complications and suffering of POW's and the ultimate price for that torture is defined in one mans return to innocence.
Rating:
Summary: Melodrama masquerading as deep thinking
Review: Jim Lehrer is a smart and talented man, but this book is basically a male soap opera, with melodramatic and unrealistic plot twists.
You would think that someone with a background in television journalism would be able to capture an original take on a 'celebrity' trial, but all he's done is re-use every cliche that every other similar book has used. And, without giving any plot away, the behavior and motivation of the characters is neither sympathetic or excusable even given the most trying of circumstances.
It's a tossed-off work, and it does not do justice to either the POW genre, or as a study of moral behavior.
Lastly, and maybe this was corrected later in the book and I overlooked it, John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the US.
Rating: 
Summary: only a beginning
Review: Jim Lehrer really pushes some buttons in this book, exposing the reader to the overwhelming emotion of an ex-POW upon seeing one of the brutal prison guards from his captivity, 50 years before. The story itself may seem a little contrived, but the emotions are real and Mr. Lehrer takes the reader for a ride. Well worth reading and recalling the sacrifices that others have made so that we can enjoy the freedoms we have.
Rating:
Summary: the horror of war once removed
Review: Lehrer captures the haunting effects of war as only someone who's read about them can. This is the first book of his I have read, and will also be the last. He combines a newscaster's flair for the language with an innate ineptitude at storytelling in this paint-by-numbers affair. It was a good idea, but he's not up to the task. For an exploration of the lingering damage of war, check out Tim O'Brien's In The Lake of The Woods. All the same themes in the hands of a storyteller who knows his subject matter first hand. That is a great book.
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