Crime & fiction books

The Intruders is the sequel to Flight of the Intruder, by Stephen Coonts – one of the best flight combat aviation novels from the Vietnam War, which stayed on the New York Times hardcover bestseller lists for 28 weeks. Flight of the Intruder was published in 1986, and The Intruders was published in 1994 following the publishing of four other Jake Grafton books: Final Flight (1988), The Minotaur (1989), Under Siege (1990) and The Red Horseman (1993).

The Intruders brings back fighter pilot Jake Grafton. The year is 1973. The skies over Vietnam have finally gone silent. America has pulled out, and the war is over.

For Lieutenant Jake Grafton, USN, fresh from two combat cruises and a harrowing shoot-down over Laos, the personal battle is just beginning. He, like many others, finds that his country has not welcomed him home with open arms, but with closed minds and closed fists. When his girlfriend’s father called him a murderer, Jake walked away. But when a stranger in a bar challenged his honor, the man was not so lucky – he landed in the hospital, and Jake in jail.

Grafton’s shore-duty commander, who bailed him out, has devised the perfect punishment for his ace flight instructor: an eight-month cruise on the aircraft carrier Columbia teaching jarheads – Marines – the nuances of carrier aviation. Flying missions over Vietnam was a living hell; now Grafton’s about to discover another world of fresh hell.

The Marines may be made of tempered steel and brass balls, but taking off and landing from a slippery flight deck, on a choppy sea in a pitch-black night, there is no margin for error or for animosity. And men like Marine Captain Flap Le Beau, his bombardier and navigator, have a real gift for pushing Jake’s buttons. They belong to the same society of warriors, they fought in the same war, and they drink the same whiskey to toast fallen comrades. Now they must fly together in the same cockpit, must lock into each other and into their million-dollar machine, and make the split-second decisions which will insure that, tonight, their fellow pilots won’t raise a glass to them.

The Intruders is a good book, and interesting for readers of the Jake Grafton series. But the plot is weak. We follow Jake Grafton through a set of isolated episodes spanning an eight-month period, rather than a single continuous plot. The strengths of the book lie in its excellent descriptions of how naval aviation works, and Stephen Coonts’ writing, full of wit and intelligence. It is even so one of the weaker novels in this series.

Links to books by Stephen Coonts at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

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Sophie’s Choice is a grand novel – really world class fiction, and probably the best William Styron has written. It was first published in 1979, and is a complex, daunting and very ambitious novel. It is also a profoundly moving and disturbing novel. “Sophie’s Choice is a passionate, courageous book…a philosophical novel on the most important subject of the twentieth century,” said novelist and critic John Gardner in The New York Times Book Review:

“Sophie’s Choice is a thriller of the highest order, all the more thrilling for the fact that the dark, gloomy secrets we are unearthing one by one—sorting through lies and terrible misunderstandings like a hand groping for a golden nugget in a rattlesnake’s nest—may be authentic secrets of history and our own human nature.”

The main character in Sophie’s Choice is Stingo, a young southern man who has moved to New York City after the war. He struggles to become a writer. Along the way he meets Sophie, a beautiful Polish woman whose wrist bears the grim tattoo of a concentration camp, and her Jewish love, Nathan. Nathan is strange and unstable. Most of the time he seems normal, but he can also be wild and violent. Sophie is deeply in love with Nathan, and unable to detach herself even when he is cruel to her.

Stingo somehow connects with both of them. And more so to Sophie, who starts sharing details about her life with him. Even things she keeps secret from Nathan. Much of what she tells concerns the infamous death camp of Auschwitz and the evil things that took place there.

The stories Sophie tells are hard to read. They are the kind of stories that can make you cry. Her suffering was terrible, beyond imaginable in many ways, but even so there were others who were treated far worse.  Sophie’s story and her choices are extremely tough.

You should perhaps also be warned that there is some quite graphic sexuality in the novel. Whether it should be called pornography or not, is hard to say. The sex stories to some extent serve to keep the story bearable for the reader, as a book just about Sophie’s tale would be very hard to get through.

William Styron’s writing style is very clever and original. He alternates between points of view and changes styles to tell the story in ways which reflect situations and emotions. The novel is beautiful yet heartbreaking, and at times it even manages to be funny – a true literary masterpiece, and in its way a strong tale of survival and the Holocaust as well.

Links to books by William Styron at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

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This book by Michael Crichton was filmed in 1999 with Antonino Banderas: The 13th Warrior. The movie is in this case better than the book.

Eaters of the Dead is set in the 10th century. The Caliph of Baghdad sends his ambassador, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, to the king of the Volga Bulgars. He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings. This group is sent on a hero’s quest to the north. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along, as the thirteenth member of their group, to bring good luck. There he battles with the ‘mist-monsters’, or ‘Neanderthals’.

Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript. A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources.

Eaters of the Dead is a a good and interesting read, but in my opinion not among Michael Crichton’s best.

Links to books by Michael Crichton at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

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One of the things that make Stephen’s Frey’s novels extremely enjoyable is his detailed knowledge of the financial markets and the investment industry. Another is his ability to create action filled plots with a lot of misdirection. In The Chairman both of these abilities are on display.

The book provides an interesting glance into the world of the financial wizards who move staggering amounts of money and exercise a lot influence over a lot of things – controlling many destinies as a means to make the money grow.

After the chairman of Everest Capital dies, partner Christian Gillette is elected successor. So now, suddenly the young man finds himself the head of Everest Capital, one of the world’s largest private equity partnerships. Gillette now wields previously unimagined power and is exposed to equally unimagined danger. Somebody is after him: His limo explodes, he survives an assassination attempt. But why? What do they want? Who stands to gain?

Gillette doesn’t mind wielding his might, first by firing one of the managing partners, then by snubbing a U.S. senator; however, accumulating enemies does not stop Gillette from planning the biggest venture fund in history. But as more and more people start dying around him, he seeks outside assistance and hires a band of tough body guards. And seeks to unravel the mysteries surrounding the death of his former boss, the attempts on his life, the betrayals, the information leakages from his firm, and the multiple others strange things happening.

Gillette is an interesting character. He is clearly motivated by money and risk taking, but there is more to him as well – a human side, emotions and motivations gradually revealed in the book. I liked Christian Gillette, and in my opinion Stephen Frey has done a great job of character development in The Chairman.

For sure, there are a few somewhat implausible scenarios and assumptions in this book. But if you’re willing to overlook those, The Chairman is an excellent and very entertaining financial thriller, written by one of the best authors of such thrillers for the moment. I enjoyed it a lot.

Praise for The Chairman:

“[Frey’s] best yet . . . twists galore, great action and crisp dialogue. With his lively writing and cynical humor, this author . . . is a captivating tour guide to a Wall Street wonderland of greed, folly and deceit.”

–Forbes

“High-stakes power play at its most ferocious level. Read it!”

–Donald J. Trump

Links to the books by Stephen Frey: amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

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This excellent thriller has never been rated quite as high as MacLean’s very best, such as Ulysses, The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare. Even so, it s a very good book, exciting, full of those extraordinary descriptions that MacLean did so well, and fun to read.

South by Java Head is set in 1942, and tells a story taking place in connection with the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. Now Singapore, the fortress that the British claimed could not be taken, lies burning and shattered, at this point defenseless before the conquering hordes of the Japanese Army. The last boat slips out of the harbor into the South China Sea. On board are a desperate group of people, each with a secret to guard, each willing to kill to keep that secret safe.

Who or what is the dissolute Englishman, Farnholme? Or the elegant Dutch planter, Van Effen? The strangely beautiful Eurasian girl, Gudrun? The slave trader, Siran? The story is full of suspense and you know that something is wrong with more than one of the passengers’ stories. Also, why are the Japanese chasing them with all they have and refusing to let them get away?

Only one thing is certain: the rotting tramp steamer is a floating death trap. Dawn sees them far out to sea but with the first murderous dive bombers already aimed at their ship. Thus begins an ordeal few are to survive, a nightmare succession of disasters wrought by the hell-bent Japanese, the unrelenting tropical sun and by the survivors themselves, whose hatred and bitterness divides them one against the other.

South by Java Head was MacLean’s third book. I liked it a lot when I first read it, and I still like it. It is not, in my opinion, as good as the previous two books, and there are several logically implausible elements to the plot, but even so it is a great and very entertaining book. I recommend it for MacLean-fans, but you haven’t read MacLean before, you should instead start with HMS Ulysses.

Links to the books by Alistair MacLean at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

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This is another excellently written, fast paced thriller by the deceased English grand master of thriller writing, Desmond Bagley. This time it is about a ferocious hurricane and a scientist who has a sixth sense about such things.

Hurricane Mabel lays hundreds of miles off the coast of San Fernandez (Haiti). All the weather forecasting computer models predict she will pass harmlessly by. However, Dr David Wyatt, a civilian weather expert, does not believe so. His sixth sense tells him that she will change course and hit the already poverty-stricken country head on. He knows that thousands of lives are at stake. But his attempts to prevent the disaster fail. The US Navy is not convinced, and neither is San Fernandez’s brutal dictator Serrurier. His concern is much more with crushing the rebels challenging his rule.

This is truly a great book – with wonderful dialogue, descriptions of the hurricane so vivid that you feel you experience it, and very interesting characters. The plot is elegant and nicely laid out, and the pace of the book is very brisk. A true page turner!

Links to the books by Desmond Bagley at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and amazon CAN.

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This is the third installment in the series often referred to as the Saga of Geoffrey Frost. In contrast to the previous two, however, this third novel mostly takes place on dry land, so it is not really a nautical fiction book.

The nautical fiction in this book concerns a daring attack on the British collier fleet in the mouth of the Tyne River. This is interesting and relatively well written, but seems a tad implausible.

I didn’t like Our Lives, Our Fortunes nearly as much as I like the previous two – The Private Revolution and Audacity. Mostly, I think, this is because J.E. Fender has written too much history and too many historical figures into this book. The story is that Frost takes on a mission to transport supplies to the hard-pressed Revolutionary Army, led by George Washington – not by sea, by over land. And carries out the mission with much too much perfection, and then meets men like Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and the great George Washington himself.

Fender allows Frost to report on the crafters of the Constitution through the eyes of a practical, well traveled, disenchanted businessman who bears the brunt of the Revolution in his purse and his person. To me, this – and the tale of the book overall – requires too much suspension of belief.

As in the previous book, the dialogue is still pretty wooden, implausible and distracting. The story itself is interesting, but not extremely so. To me, Our Lives, Our Fortunes was quite disappointing, and I can only recommend it to people who want to read the whole series.

Links to books by J. E. Fender at Amazon US, Amazon UK, and Amazon CAN.

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Harry Turtledove is known for his alternative history novels. In a way, the method he uses is similar to a methodology employed by some writers in of new economic history. He ask “what if” about some important historical event, and then writes a story exploring the implication of a different answer to this question than what actually happened historically.

In The Man with the Iron Heart, Turtledove examines the possible responses of the Russian Army, the U.S. Army, Congress and ordinary Americans if they had been confronted with asymmetrical warfare after the official surrender of Nazi Germany. He explores what would have happened if German resistance had continued after Hitler committed suicide and the Germans surrendered in World War II.

So, while number two SS leader Reinhard Heydrich was killed in 1942, Turtledove examines what might have happened had Heydrich survived and lived to lead a grassroots resistance movement. Borrowing ideas from their late Japanese allies, the fanatics of the German Freedom Front launch a campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. The Russians responded with calculated brutality, while the mother of a slain American soldier pressures President Truman to bring the boys home. The parallels to the current situation in Iraq are obvious but cleverly drawn, leaving readers on both sides of the war debate with much to think about.

The Man with the Iron Heart is an interesting book, and overall an interesting way to generate plots. However, I didn’t get really excited about the book. The plot was a little to mechanical and the characters didn’t really connect. But if you’re interested in alternative history, you may feel differently.

“Turtledove is the standard-bearer of alternate history.”

–USA Today

“Turtledove pulls out all the stops in a panoramic display of historical speculation. [He] sets the standard for alternate history and once more proves his worth.”

–Library Journal

Links to books by Harry Turtledove at amazon US and amazon UK.

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This is an excellent naval novel by Douglas Reeman. Essentially it is a story about the relationship between a man and a ship, excellently described and told.

The book has two parts. The first takes place in 1915, when young midshipman Richard Chesnaye serves aboard HMS Saracen. HMS Saracen is a strange bastard of a ship, known as a monitor. It is a construction with huge guns – 15 inch – mounted on a ship, designed mainly for land bombardment. We follow Chesnaye as he serves on the ship, and during combat action in Turkey (World War I). In Gallipoli in 1915, in heavy combat, both the man and the vessel perform excellently.

Then we meet them both again in the spring of 1941. The two seeming relics of the past are brought together again Chesnaye in command as Captain of the HMS Saracen. Both are viewed as unfit. And to most people HMS Saracen is just an ugly, obsolete ship. It was a type of ship already obsolete when it was launched and now almost entirely forgotten. But to Chesnaye she brings back memories. She is a ship he loves and one which he regards as having interesting potential. And Chesnaye does a great job and delivers results beyond expectations with his old, beloved ship.

And when a convoy from Egypt en route to Malta protected by the Saracen and a battle group of newer naval ships is attacked by the Italians, both captain and ship rise to the occasion, repulsing the onslaught of the superior foe.

Written in the mid-sixties, H.M.S. Saracen is one of Douglas Reeman’s very best novels, and an excellent naval war book. The conclusion of the book is very moving. If you like modern naval fiction or are interested in the Royal Navy and the campaigns it waged in the Mediterranean in the 20th Century, then this is a book to read! HMS Saracen is a highly enjoyable novel that depicts the horror and the glory of war at sea in a very realistic and suspenseful way.

Links to books by Douglas Reeman at amazon US, amazon UK, and amazon CAN

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