Review: The Bullet Garden - Stephen Hunter

Years ago, I read Stephen Hunter’s novel HOT SPRINGS, the first book in his Earl Swagger series. I thought it was one of the best books I’d read in a long time, so I read the sequel PALE HORSE COMING, and loved it, too, although I thought it wasn’t quite as good as HOT SPRINGS. When the third book in the series, HAVANA, came out, I read it, of course, and it was okay, but not nearly as good as the first two. And after that, I never read anything else by Hunter, although I’ve always intended to and I actually own most of his books.

But then I noticed that there’s a fourth Earl Swagger novel called THE BULLET GARDEN, and it’s a prequel to the others, taking place during World War II, so I had to give it a try. THE BULLET GARDEN is set during summer 1944, after D-Day but well before the Battle of the Bulge. The American forces have gotten bogged down in the hedgerows of Normandy because a mysterious German sniper—or snipers—seems to be able to see in the dark and is eliminating American officers and NCOs, destroying morale and making it impossible for the Americans to advance. Gererals Eisenhower and Bradley want somebody to figure out what’s going on with the sniper and put a stop to it, and who better to do that than Earl Swagger, a Marine sergeant who has already made quite a reputation for himself fighting in the Pacific.

All this is established fairly quickly, and the rest of the novel follows Earl as he’s flown to England, made a major in the relatively new OSS, and launches an investigation into the sniper problem while trying to navigate the tricky back channels of politics and espionage, an area which is not one of Earl’s natural talents.

Hunter’s reputation is that of a guy who writes really well about guns and shooting. This is absolutely correct. His action scenes are very realistic and have an undeniable air of authenticity. THE BULLET GARDEN is full of great characters and scenes and bits of dialogue.

But the plot is incredibly slow to develop and muddled by page after page of description and background that’s well-written but doesn’t really do anything except show off Hunter’s prose. I’m no fan of stripped-down modern writing. I don’t mind some telling instead of showing. A lot of modern thrillers devoid of description and oh-so-careful never to mention the weather or use a speech tag other than “said”—and as few of those as possible—strike me as bland and all sounding alike. But dang, Hunter really goes overboard in the other direction in this book. It’s just too blasted wordy. Then he adds an unpleasant subplot that may be necessary for the overall story arc but really comes across as anticlimactic. There are also several cameos by real-life writers that skirt right up to the edge of being too cutesy but don't quite go over it.

Despite all that, as I said above there are some great scenes, some thrilling, some heartbreaking, that I suspect will stay with me. I still love Earl Swagger as a character and he’s in fine form in this novel. There’s enough real suspense that at times I was flipping the pages, in a hurry to find out what was going to happen. If you’ve read the first three books in this series, by all means you should read THE BULLET GARDEN, too. It’s available on Amazon in e-book, audio, hardcover, and paperback editions. But like HAVANA, it’s just okay.

Also, this novel isn’t just a prequel to the other Earl Swagger books, but it's also a prequel to Hunter’s first novel, THE MASTER SNIPER, published more than forty years ago. I happen to have a copy of that one. I think I’ll have to read it soon.

The Last Line - Stephen Ronson

I’m a little bit leery of any book where the protagonist is compared to Jack Reacher. That seems to have been an overdone trend in recent years. On the other hand, how many paperbacks did I buy back in the Sixties and Seventies with “In the Tradition of CONAN!” emblazoned across the front cover? (The answer: a lot.) So I didn’t worry too much about the blurb on THE LAST LINE, the debut novel from Stephen Ronson, and just plunged into the book. I’m glad that I did, because it’s a terrific thriller.

The title is a reference to the phrase “the last line of defense”, and that’s what narrator/protagonist John Cook becomes part of during the summer of 1940 when it appears that France is about to fall to the invading German army and everyone in England expects that Hitler will soon have them in his sights. Most people expect the bombers to show up any time, and no one really holds out much hope that the country will be able to withstand the Nazi onslaught for very long. So Cook, a middle-aged farmer and former soldier during the first World War, is recruited to become part of a planned resistance movement that will try to wreak havoc on the German occupiers. Cook has more skills than most at such things, having fought for British forces in Afghanistance following the end of the World War. He’s a lot more dangerous than he might appear to be at first glance.

The looming threat of the Germans isn’t all Cook has to contend with, however. A young woman is murdered on his property, and he’s the leading suspect in her murder. In the course of trying to clear himself of that charge, he uncovers two dangerous conspiracies that may or may not be linked. Children who have been evacuated from London to the countryside to protect them from the expected bombing have gone missing, and then there’s the matter of what’s being hidden in a locked barn on a neighboring estate. Tragedy, romance, and a lot of gritty, well-written action ensue.

You wouldn’t know this was Ronson’s first novel because he keeps the story racing along with the sure hand of a longtime professional. I’m not an expert on the location or the time period, but the setting and background certainly ring true to me. John Cook is a great narrator/protagonist, plenty tough and smart and sympathetic even though at times he’s not all that likable. The supporting cast is good and the villains suitably creepy. Not everything plays out exactly as I suspected it would, and that’s always good, too.

I stayed up later than usual to finish THE LAST LINE, and as I mentioned recently, it takes a really good book to make me do that. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and hope it’s the first of a series. It’s available in hardback and e-book editions on Amazon.

Traitor! - W. Howard Baker

I was a freshman in high school when Lancer Books published TRAITOR! by W. Howard Baker, a novel that had been published two years earlier in England by Zenith Books under the title DESTINATION DIEPPE. As a World War II espionage novel, the first in a series starring British intelligence agent Richard Quintain, it would have been right in my wheelhouse at the time, and I’m sure I’d have grabbed a copy if I’d ever seen it. As it was, more than fifty years went by before I was even aware of this book’s existence, although I vaguely remember seeing some of the later books in the Quintain series. I didn’t realize they were set during World War II, though.

It’s the summer of 1942 as this book opens. The war has been going on for three years, and Quintain has already undertaken several hazardous missions operating behind enemy lines. He’s just been presented with a medal from the king for one of them when he’s summoned by his boss, Felix Fenner, and given a new assignment. The British army is planning an invasion of the Nazi-occupied French coastal town of Dieppe, and Quintain’s job is to parachute in first, make contact with a local group of resistance fighters, and blow up a bunch of German E-boats that would otherwise be used to help repel the invasion. Quintain has a partner in this effort, a beautiful female agent who’s already been behind the lines in France and knows the members of the resistance cell they’re supposed to link up with.

There’s a twist, however, as Fenner reveals to Quintain in private. He believes that one of the group is a traitor and is working with the Germans . . . and it could easily be Quintain’s beautiful partner.

This novel reminded me a great deal of mid-Sixties TV shows such as GARRISON’S GORILLAS and BLUE LIGHT, wartime espionage dramas that are mostly forgotten these days (but I’ll bet quite a few of you reading this remember them). It’s a little talky and sparse on the action in the first half but then picks up a lot of steam in the second half before bogging down in the history of the raid on Dieppe. Other than Quintain’s involvement and the traitor storyline, the history is portrayed with considerable accuracy, if not much flair.

That said, overall the prose is slick enough that I raced through the book pretty quickly and with quite a bit of enjoyment. We don’t learn much about Richard Quintain in this one, but he seems to be a likable enough protagonist and is both smart and tough when he needs to be. The scene where he’s interrogated by a beautiful blond Gestapo she-wolf (an actual historical character, according to a footnote) is very suspenseful and well done. The book could have used a little more of such things.

W. Howard Baker was as much an editor and publisher as he was a writer, and it’s known that many of the books with his name on them were either ghosted or had uncredited collaborators. For what it’s worth, the style in this one is very similar to the Sexton Blake novel credited to Baker that I read not long ago. Whoever actually wrote TRAITOR!, I liked it enough despite its occasional shortcomings to want to read more of the Richard Quintain series. I’m glad I have several more of them on hand.

Paperbacks at War - Justin Marriott, ed.

LEGION OF THE DAMNED!

World War Two has long been a recurring theme in popular culture.

Its grand scale, themes, and emotions offered rich inspiration for authors, who readily provided the public with tales of fearless heroes, diabolical enemies, and enduring love.

This book reviews 170+ of books, comics and pulp magazines that used the setting of war, providing information and opinion on their entertainment value and historical importance.

From pioneering pulp heroes such as The Operator and Lone Eagle, to comic icons such as Sgt. Rock and The Unknown Soldier, to the cynical and ultra-violent paperbacks of the 1970s from Sven Hassel and Leo Kessler.

Fully illustrated with 200+ reproductions of paperbacks and comics.

(Following up on several superb volumes of reviews concentrating on particular genres of adventure fiction, editor Justin Marriott strikes again with PAPERBACKS AT WAR, a wonderful collection of reviews by knowledgeable fans about scores of war-themed novels, mostly paperback originals, with many series entries and also plenty of stand-alones. This is the sort of book you can dip into now and then, if that's what you want, but I found myself compulsively reading it . . . and then heading to Amazon to compulsively buy the books that appealed to me the most. I've read a considerable amount of war fiction, but PAPERBACKS AT WAR contains reviews of plenty of books that are new to me, too. I had a great time reading it, and I'm pretty sure I'll have a great time reading the books it prompted me to buy. Highly recommended.)

The General Dies at Dawn - Alan Hebden

 

Like DEATH SQUAD, which I read recently and really enjoyed, THE GENERAL DIES AT DAWN is a serial from the British comic BATTLE, written by Alan Hebden with art by John Cooper. And also like DEATH SQUAD, it’s written from the German point of view, although there’s only one protagonist in this story, not the five of DEATH SQUAD.

That protagonist is the general of the title, Otto von Margen, a Panzer commander fighting on the Eastern Front in Russia. As the story opens, von Margen is imprisoned, convicted of treason and cowardice and awaiting execution by the SS at dawn the next day. But it’s the spring of 1945, and American troops are closing in on the prison where von Margen is being held. If they get there first and take control, von Margen probably will be spared. If not . . . he’ll keep his date with the SS firing squad.

So to pass the time on what may be his last night, von Margen tells the story of his military career to the soldier guarding him, with each part of the tale being another episode in the serial. Von Margen, a proud officer from the Junker class, has clashed repeatedly with the SS during the war, such friction eventually leading to his imprisonment and conviction. But along the way, he takes part in many battles, including the desperate Siege of Stalingrad.

This story is shorter but more epic in scale than DEATH SQUAD, which covered a relatively short period of time rather than most of the war. But there’s plenty of action, mostly tank battles on the frozen Russian plains. Von Margen is an interesting character, a professional soldier who fights because that’s his job, another example of a German protagonist the reader can sort of root for, even though he’s on the wrong side in the war.

Hebden’s script has the usual twists. He can pack an awful lot of plot into these three-page episodes. Cooper’s art is excellent as well. All of it comes together to create a considerable amount of genuine suspense as the story winds down and we flip the pages to find out whether the Americans will arrive in time to save von Margen’s life. Do we even want them to? That’s a question every reader will have to answer for themselves, I suppose. This story was reprinted in the collection BATTLE CLASSICS, edited by Garth Ennis, which is still available, and if the others in that volume are as good, it’s well worth reading.

Death Squad - Alan Hebden

Having grown up reading OUR ARMY AT WAR (with Sgt. Rock), OUR FIGHTING FORCES (with Gunner and Sarge—and Pooch!), and all the other DC war comics, plus SGT. FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS over at Marvel, plus being a huge fan of the TV series COMBAT!, I had a hard time warming up to the sub-genre of war fiction that features German protagonists. Oh, I read ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT by Erich Maria Remarque and was impressed by it, but it took the ENEMY ACE series by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert to convince me that good, compelling war stories could be told from the enemy point of view. Still, I haven’t read much in that field. I have novels by Sven Hassel, Charles Whiting (writing as Leo Kessler) and Kenneth Bulmer (writing as Bruno Krauss) that feature German protagonists, but I haven’t gotten around to them yet.

But then along comes DEATH SQUAD, a magnificent collection of a serial written by Alan Hebden, with art by Eric Bradbury, that originally appeared in the British comic book BATTLE ACTION in 1980 and ’81, and just like that, I’m a big fan. This is one of the best war comics I’ve ever read.

The Death Squad is part of a punishment battalion in the German Wehrmacht and consists of five men: Granddad, the crusty old non-com who’s also a veteran of the first World War; con man Gus; knife expert Frankie; Swede, a Scandinavian lumberjack who’s deadly with a throwing axe; and Licker, the only real Nazi in the bunch, stiff-necked and pompous, as you’d expect. They’re grunts, with the exception of Licker, and as such they’re fighting more for each other and to stay alive, rather than for the Fuhrer or the Fatherland. This seems to be a common concept in the sub-genre. The protagonists are either enlisted men or occasionally an aristocratic officer, but none of them are actually Nazis, and none of them get along with the Gestapo or the S.S. This allows the reader to sympathize with them, at least to a certain extent.

It’s impossible not to sympathize with the Death Squad, as they get thrown into mission after mission where the odds of their survival are almost nil. They’re fighting on the Eastern Front against Russia (which admittedly helps in making the reader root for them) and have to deal with the terrible extremes of a Russian winter, to boot. They infiltrate Moscow to destroy a tank factory, get stranded on a snowed-in troop train under attack by Russian partisans, are tortured by sadistic prison commandants, encounter a beautiful female Russian freedom fighter, and engage in a deadly game of masquerade and deception. Even when they’re transferred back to France, to what seems like an easy job guarding a U-Boat post, they immediately run into trouble from British commandos raiding the place.

Hebden’s script is great, especially in the extended Russian front sequence where he throws in plot twist after plot twist and makes them all work. Characterization is, of necessity, rather limited except for the Death Squad, but each of them comes alive vividly. The tough but likable old-timer Granddad is my favorite, but they’re all portrayed very well. The art by Eric Bradbury is also top-notch, filled with action and details, capturing both the carnage and the poignant moments of war. If you’re a fan of war comics, or war fiction in general, I give DEATH SQUAD a very high recommendation. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Commando: Codename Warlord: Ship of Fools - Iain McLaughlin

Get ready for Lord Peter Flint like he's never been seen before -- with a beard! German Navy zealots are hell-bent on building a 'Fuhrer' class warship, the biggest warship of all time, and only Britain's top secret agent, Codename Warlord, can stop them!

(I find it kind of, um, odd that the sales copy for this issue of COMMANDO chooses to emphasize the fact that Lord Peter Flint disguises himself with a fake beard. It's really not a huge part of the plot. The story is very enjoyable overall, though, a good espionage yarn set in the very early days of the war. Iain McLaughlin's stories are almost non-stop action and quite entertaining. I don't talk much about the art in these, but that job is handled this time by Manuel Benet, and I like his work quite a bit. At times it reminds me of Joe Kubert, and at others of John Severin. When you're talking about war comics, you can't do much better than those two!)

Commando: Destination Siberia - Alan Hebden

When Hector Salway and a bunch of mates decided to go halfway around the world to repay a debt, they knew it wouldn't be an easy task -- their destination was Siberia, with the Cold War between the West and East at its height. What they didn't know was that a vicious killer who had tried to murder them once before would already be there -- and was now even more dangerous.

(As always with Alan Hebden's COMMANDO stories, this is a well-written yarn with a bit more of an epic scope than usual, going from Italy in the final months of World War II to a Siberian prison camp in the post-war years. This is a reprint of a story originally published in 1994, and I'm glad COMMANDO brought it back because I really enjoyed it.)

A Handful of Hell - Robert F. Dorr

I became acquainted with Robert F. Dorr only in the past couple of years, through Facebook, e-mail correspondence, and one enjoyable phone conversation. He passed away earlier this year. Best known as a military historian specializing in aviation topics, he wrote scores of stories and articles for the men’s adventure magazines. I read some of those magazines as a kid (when I could sneak ’em into the house), so I may well have encountered Bob Dorr’s work back in the Sixties and Seventies, but since I didn’t pay much attention to the authors’ names, I can’t really say whether I did or not. (As an aside, I did notice the names of two authors back then: Wayne C. Ulsh and Roland Empey. Ulsh went on to write several paperback thrillers, and Roland Empey turned out to be Walter Kaylin, one of the most prolific and respected men’s adventure magazine writers. There’s an excellent collection of his work available from the same good folks who put together the book I’m writing about now.)

But to get back to Bob Dorr . . . Earlier this year, The Men’s Adventure Library and New Texture Books (basically Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, the editors of this volume) published A HANDFUL OF HELL, a collection of some of Robert F. Dorr’s best stories from the men’s adventure magazines. They range from Dorr’s debut story, “The Night Intruders”, the story of a Korean War bombing mission first published in REAL, August 1962, to “I Fought Burma’s ‘Red Flag’ Terrorist Killers”, from BLUEBOOK, March 1972. Most of the stories are set during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam war, but there are a few non-military adventure yarns as well.

Some of these stories are only lightly fictionalized accounts of actual incidents, while others are completely made up. But what you’ll notice immediately is the air of complete authenticity that runs through all of them. Dorr’s fiction is so realistic that it might as well be based on true stories. There’s also a great deal of empathy for the American fighting men featured in them. They’re not superheroes. They’re average guys, with individual strengths and weaknesses, just trying to do the best they can in very harrowing situations. Dorr’s style is vivid and clear, making it easy for even a non-military, non-flying reader (like me) to understand and appreciate what’s going on. There are no wasted words. These stories get moving right away and never slow down. They hit like a punch in the gut—and that’s a good thing, to my way of thinking.

I’m sorry I didn’t get this book read and this review posted before Bob passed away, so he could have known how much I enjoyed and was impressed by it. It’s a great collection, one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a very high recommendation. (If you’re going to pick up a copy, I’d go for the hardback edition, which contains bonus stories and material, not to mention being a very handsome volume.)

Forgotten Books: Doom Platoon - Richard Gallagher (Len Levinson)

Readers of the World War II series THE SERGEANT by Gordon Davis may notice some similarities between those books and the novel DOOM PLATOON by Richard Gallagher. THE SERGEANT features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mahoney. DOOM PLATOON features a big, ugly, extremely tough non-com, Sergeant Mazursky. Graphic violence abounds in both (although to be fair, these are war novels). There's plenty of crude, politically incorrect dark humor. None of these similarities come as any surprise when you realize that Gordon Davis and Richard Gallagher are actually the same person: veteran paperbacker Len Levinson.

DOOM PLATOON came out a couple of years before THE SERGEANT began, so it can be regarded as a sort of dry run for the later series, I suppose. But it can certainly be read with enjoyment on its own. During the Battle of the Bulge, the platoon of the title is under the command of Sergeant Mazursky after their lieutenant is killed in action. These 29 men are posted on a ridge above a narrow road, and their mission is to stop an entire Panzer division from advancing and hold the road until the retreating American army can regroup. It's a suicide mission, of course, and the first half of this novel is very intense as Mazursky and his platoon try to fight off the overwhelming Nazi forces.

Then, halfway through, DOOM PLATOON becomes a P.O.W. novel as the survivors from the battle are taken to a German prison camp, and the rest of the book chronicles what happens to them from then until the end of the war. While this part of the book doesn't have the urgency of the first half, it's still very well done and keeps the reader flipping the pages.

It's kind of a reviewer's cliché to say that prose is compulsively readable, but Levinson really does have that knack. His characters may not be particularly likable, but he makes you want to find out what's going to happen to them. This book, originally an obscure paperback from Belmont-Tower, is a good example of that.

Luckily, it's just been re-issued as an e-book by Pulp Heaven, an offshoot of Picadilly Publishing. They've published several more Levinson thrillers, and I have them all on my Kindle. If you're a fan of war fiction, or if you've read THE SERGEANT or Levinson's other series THE RAT BASTARDS (about the war in the Pacific, originally published under the pseudonym John Mackie), you'll definitely want to check out DOOM PLATOON.

Now Available from Black Dog Books: Wings of War!

Our latest title, Wings of War, collecting the first two novel-length adventures of John Masters, The Lone Eagle, is now available for purchase.

Visit our Wings of War listings page to learn more or order your copy today.

Pilot extraordinaire John Masters was an ace operative of the U.S. Secret Service when war broke out. So it was only natural that when the first squadron of Yank flyers went to France to strafe the Boche, Masters went too, only operating undercover.

Masters became the Lone Eagle of the Skies, displaying an indomitable courage and dynamic driving power to push any secret mission to a successful conclusion; a fighting ace whose dark and inscrutable movements became the scourge of all enemy powers.

Suspected by many, some men feared him, some men hated him. The alluring but deadly female German spy R-47 may have loved him. Masters became that mysterious Nemesis of the Western Front known only as—The Lone Eagle!

http://www.blackdogbooks.net/index.php?Itemid=13&option=com_zoo&view=item&category_id=7&item_id=114

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"John Masters blasts his way across the skies in the kind of aerial action that will thrill modern readers as much as it did the pulp readers of the '30s. The Lone Eagle is a hero for the ages!"—Bill Crider, contributing author to the Nick Carter and Stone: M.I.A. Hunter series

"In the 1930s, the Lone Eagle set the bar for realistic action adventure with a tough guy loner able to survive against all comers. John Masters blazed a bullet-strewn path that series heroes of the 1970s and 1980s were hard pressed to follow."—Mel Odom, contributing author to the SuperBolan, Stonyman and Executioner series

"Combat ace John Masters was one of the most realistic air heroes of the pulp era. It's about damn time these bullet-torn tales were reprinted!"—Will Murray, contributing author to the Destroyer series

"Great fun!"—Stephen Mertz, contributing author to the Executioner, Tunnel Rats and Cody's Army series


(I've read both of these novels and really enjoyed them. These aren't the wild, science-fictional adventures of G-8 and his Battle Aces. The Lone Eagle novels are grim and gritty, with an emphasis on espionage and excellent aerial combat sequences. If you've never tried this series, I highly recommend it.)

Book Alert: Nam - Robert McGowan

NAM: Things That Weren't True and Other Stories
some funny ~ some sad
The thirty-seven stories in this sometimes harrowing, sometimes hilarious collection look back at the Vietnam War from a distance of over forty years. It is derived of the author's Vietnam War experience, and adds the perspectives of not only the soldiers themselves, but also their children, spouses, siblings, parents, friends.


This is hardly just another batch of macho war stories. These short fictions, most of them memoir-based, neither glorify nor excuse war. They are, instead, an eloquent testament to the tragic lunacy of war.


Nothing comparable to this collection exists within the literature growing out of the Vietnam War.


Excerpts of reviews for NAM:
"Rob McGowan’s stories have the energy and grip of a pit bull... But the risks any reader takes in entering such tightly leashed tales will be copiously rewarded."
— Brian Bedard, author of the story collection, Grieving on the Run.


"Reading these stories from NAM brings back the heart of the war for all to see and hear. I am a fan of McGowan's work because, even when it’s impossible to know from your own experience whether a story is factually accurate, you know very well that the story is true, really true."
— Carol Brightman, editor of the influential underground Viet-Report during the late 1960s.


"The tales in NAM: Things That Weren’t True and Other Stories approach their troubling subject from all sides, chipping away at the mysterious monolith that was the American war. In this collection, Robert McGowan displays remarkable range and depth."
— Stewart O’Nan, eminent American novelist and editor of the anthology, The Vietnam Reader.


"This collection is unique... a narrative imbued in turn with brutal frankness, pathos, irony, and the blackest of humor. The author’s sense of place is palpable; his eye for detail crazy-clear; his ear for dialogue both true and great fun."
— Susan O’Neill, an Army nurse in Vietnam (1969) and author of the Vietnam War story collection, Don’t Mean Nothing.


(NAM is published by Meridian Star Press, an imprint of the great Murder Slim Press and is an impressive debut for this new line.)

Under Outlaw Flags E-Book Now Available

Most writers have favorites among their work.  UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS is one of mine.  It's one of the few books I ever sold on the phone, just by telling the editor about the concept:  the last gang of Old West outlaws gets arrested after robbing a bank, and they have to choose between going to prison or enlisting in the army to go to France and fight the Boche.  Naturally, they choose to fight.  But outlaws tend to have their own way of doing things . . . When the editor heard this, he said, "I'll get the paperwork started.  Oh, and by the way, make sure lots of things blow up real good."


Another reason I like it is because I put myself in it as a character (you'll spot me if you read the prologue).  And it was a finalist for the Spur Award given by the Western Writers of America.  I think I did a pretty good job on the research, too.  Mostly, though, I think that in this book I did about as good a job as I've ever done of capturing the voice I wanted to capture and hitting the notes I wanted to hit.  In going over the Kindle edition, I found myself getting misty-eyed over some of the scenes . . . and I wrote the blasted thing!


UNDER OUTLAW FLAGS is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. I've often described it to people as "just your basic Western/World War I novel where lots of stuff blows up real good".  If that sounds like the kind of yarn that might appeal to you, check it out.

Forgotten Books: Attack! - Leland Jamieson

ATTACK! is one of only three novels that I know of by Leland Jamieson. I read a bunch of Jamieson's pulp stories a while back and enjoyed all of them. He specialized in stories about aviation and was published often in BLUE BOOK, one of the classiest of the pulp magazines. It's possible that ATTACK! was originally published in BLUE BOOK. I know it had hardcover editions from two different publishers, Morrow and Grosset & Dunlap. I read the G&D, which was probably the "cheap" reprint edition.


Read now 71 years after it was published in 1940, this would have to be considered an alternate history novel. It centers around a U.S. aircraft carrier in the South Atlantic when war breaks out between the United States and Germany over Germany's attempt to invade and take over Brazil so that the Nazis can use it as a base for an invasion of North America. The pilots on the American carrier Scarab have to stop the German invasion fleet almost singlehandedly.


There's not much characterization other than the one pilot who functions as the book's protagonist, but Jamieson writes very well about air and naval combat. The battle scenes are extremely well-done, and his portrayal of life aboard an aircraft carrier is vivid and convincing. I'm no expert on such things, but I did quite a bit of research on the subject while I was writing my World War II series and have also visited the U.S.S. Lexington several times where it's now docked in Corpus Christi, Texas, and everything about ATTACK! rings true to me. Personally, I would have liked a little more detail about the planes -- were those dive bombers Dauntlesses, and were those fighters Avengers? -- but that's pretty minor. Jamieson probably kept things deliberately generic and vague because he was writing about something that, from his perspective, hadn't happened yet. That's very different from writing historical fiction.  This is a very entertaining yarn.

Forgotten Books: Combat General - William Chamberlain

When I was a kid in school, I loved it when the teacher would pass out the book order forms from Scholastic Book Services. I always found a lot of books I wanted, and I would order as many as my parents were willing to pay for. Even better were the days when the books actually arrived and the teacher gave us the ones we had ordered. I still remember racing home to read THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES in the Scholastic edition.

One book that I remember buying at school like that was COMBAT GENERAL by William Chamberlain. But for some reason I never read it, even though it sat on my shelf for years. I lost track of it and my other Scholastic books over the years. They were already gone before the fire wiped out my library.

However, I recently came across a copy of COMBAT GENERAL in the Nostalgia section at Half Price books, and I didn’t hesitate to pick it up, figuring it was finally time to read it, forty-five years after I bought it the first time.


I’ve always liked war novels. As you might expect from a book published by Scholastic, COMBAT GENERAL doesn’t have any real cussing or sex, but I’m not sure it really qualifies as a young adult novel, either. More than anything else it reminded me of the sort of war movie that was made in the Forties. Those didn’t have any cussing or graphic violence, either, but they still managed to tell some fairly gritty stories. So does COMBAT GENERAL. The protagonist is Brigadier General Miles Boone, who has spent the first few years of World War II stuck at a desk in Washington, so that he has a reputation as a “Pentagon general”. He’s finally transferred to a command position in an armored division and finds himself assuming his new post near the front lines in Belgium in the middle of December 1944.


Mid-December 1944? Uh-oh. You guessed it. Boone, with no combat experience, finds himself smack-dab in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge almost as soon as he arrives at his new command. Throw in a superior officer with whom Boone has been feuding since their days at West Point, a reckless colonel with more ambition than tactical skills, a little romance with the American widow of a French officer, a wise-cracking sergeant to drive Boone around, and you’ve got a Forties movie, all right. Randolph Scott would have made a great Miles Boone. And as a novel, Chamberlain’s yarn, while predictable, is very well-written and highly entertaining. The history seems accurate to me, and so do the characterizations.


Which is not surprising considering that William Chamberlain was a career army officer, retiring as a general himself in 1946. He certainly knew what he was writing about. But in doing a little research about him for this post, I came across something that surprised me. At the same time he was putting together a long and distinguished military career, Chamberlain was also a prolific pulp author, breaking in during the late Twenties with Western, war, and adventure yarns in a variety of pulps. He continued contributing to the pulps into the 1950s, when he made the transition to the slicks and published a steady stream of war and military-oriented stories, primarily in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. I may well have read some of them while visiting one of my aunts in the Sixties, because she always had stacks of old issues of the SEP around. Chamberlain also wrote paperback Westerns and hardcover war novels (COMBAT GENERAL was originally published by the John Day Company, as were several more of Chamberlain’s novels).


Chamberlain’s background as a pulp writer is easy to see in COMBAT GENERAL. It’s especially evident in the masterful pacing. Late in the book, when General Boone and his driver get involved in an adventure when they’re separated from the rest of the command, the story maybe gets a little too pulpish, considering the realism of the rest of the book (an encounter with an SS officer results in the trading of insults like “American swine!” and “Nazi dog!”), but that really doesn’t detract much from the novel’s overall impact.

COMBAT GENERAL is a fine book, one of the best I’ve read this year. Bear in mind, though, that as a middle-aged guy who grew up watching COMBAT! on TV, along with a bunch of war movies, I’m a prime example of the target audience for this sort of yarn. But I really enjoyed it. Some of those SEP stories of Chamberlain’s have been collected in several different volumes. I may have to order them. I also discovered that he was the author of MATT QUARTERHILL, RIFLEMAN, a novel about a young Marine rifleman in the South Pacific campaign. I checked that one out from the bookmobile many, many years ago and read it, and liked it enough that I’ve always remembered the title even though I didn’t recall that Chamberlain wrote it. I may have to get my hands on a copy of that one, too, for a reread. I’m glad I stumbled across COMBAT GENERAL. It proves that my instincts were right when I ordered it all those years ago at Walnut Creek Elementary, even though I didn’t read it until now.

Doomed Demons -- Eustace L. Adams

There’s a story behind my reading of this one. When I was a kid, the elementary school I attended had no school library. Instead, each teacher had a shelf of books in her room that the students could check out. I was in either third or fourth grade, I don’t remember which, when I found a book called DOOMED DEMONS on the library shelf in my classroom. Now, to my nine- or ten-year-old mind, DOOMED DEMONS was just about the coolest title ever, so of course I had to read it. All I remembered as time passed was that it was about World War I pilots, but that fact and the title stayed with me for more than forty years.

So recently I was poking around ABE and decided to search and see if I’d recalled the title correctly. It took only a moment to discover that I had. Cheap copies of DOOMED DEMONS are plentiful. The author is Eustace L. Adams (which I had totally forgotten) and the publisher is Grosset & Dunlap (likewise). Those two items were enough to tell me that it’s what was referred to in those days as a “boy’s adventure book”, a juvenile novel with lots of action and derring-do and a relatively young hero. Grosset & Dunlap was a well-known publisher of such books, and Eustace L. Adams was the author of the long-running Andy Lane series in that genre, as well as writing numerous adult novelettes and serials for such pulps as ARGOSY.

Well, you know where this is leading. Of course I had to order a copy and read it again, more years than I like to think about after reading it for the first time. I’m happy to report that not only does it hold up well, I probably enjoyed it more now than I did back then. It’s the story of a group of young aviators, most of them college age, in France during World War I. The hero is dashing, redheaded Jimmy Deal, and his main sidekick is the chubby, happy-go-lucky Pooch Malloy. Yeah, they’re cliches and stereotypes, and they probably were even in 1935 when this book was published, but I don’t care. I had a great time reading about their adventures. Jimmy crash-lands behind enemy lines and has to steal a German plane to get back to his aerodrome. He carries out a daring rescue of some downed fliers in the English Channel and conducts a dangerous one-man bombing raid on some German submarine pens. He even winds up owning a French country inn that he converts into an officer’s club, until it winds up being the target of a German bombing run.

Adams spins this episodic yarn in a breezy, fast-paced style for the most part, including some excellent aerial combat scenes. When a lot of authors start describing dogfights, I have a hard time following the action, but not here. The images Adams creates are clear and quite striking. Since this is a boy’s book, there’s no sex or cussin’ but plenty of violence. It is a war novel, after all. Although it’s not dwelt on in detail, characters die right and left, including some sympathetic ones. Then the book’s tone takes a sharp, very effective turn toward bleak realism near the end.

I wouldn’t recommend DOOMED DEMONS to everyone, but if you remember reading books like this as a kid or if you’re a fan of World War I aviation yarns, I think you’d get a real kick out of it. I know I did, and this is one instance where I’m glad I revisited my childhood.

The Rat Patrol #6: Desert Masquerade -- David King

When I mentioned the novels based on the Rat Patrol TV series a while back, I said that there were five of them. Well, I was wrong. There were actually six Rat Patrol novels, and thanks to Scott Cupp, I’ve now read that elusive sixth one, DESERT MASQUERADE.

Those of you old enough to remember the TV show probably recall the set-up as well. Four commandos (three Americans and a Brit) run around North Africa in a couple of jeeps equipped with .50 caliber machine guns, harassing Rommel’s Afrika Corps in general and one officer, Captain Hans Dietrich, in particular. DESERT MASQUERADE varies quite a bit from that typical scenario and is more of an espionage yarn, with the four members of the Rat Patrol operating in disguise behind enemy lines as they try to obtain some vital information that will allow the Americans to break a stand-off with a German armored column commanded by Captain Dietrich.

For the most part this novel is a comedy of errors as the author cuts back and forth between the Rat Patrol, the rest of the American force, and the Germans under Dietrich. Everybody thinks they know things they really don’t. Most of the mistakes result from false information being sold to both sides by a group of Arab spies. Everything finally works out so that the Rat Patrol emerges triumphant, but hey, you knew that going in.

I don’t know much about the author, David King, except that his real name was Howard Pehrson and that in addition to five Rat Patrol novels, he wrote a few other war novels and some Westerns as King and also contributed a couple of early books to the long-running adult Western series Slocum, as by Jake Logan, including the first book in the series. DESERT MASQUERADE kind of pokes along in places but ultimately is pretty entertaining if you’re a fan of the TV series, as I was -- and am, since I’ve watched a few episodes from the DVD set Livia gave me for our anniversary last month and so far they hold up pretty well. The music cues seem a little too dramatic and overdone now, but that’s Sixties TV for you. The location filming, with Spain standing in for North Africa, is spectacular. I’m enjoying the show so far and expect to continue doing so.

Rat Patrol Novels

Randy Johnson mentions the Rat Patrol novels in his comment on the previous post. There were five of these published by Paperback Library in the Sixties, when the show was still on the air. The first one was by veteran pulp author and paperbacker Norman Daniels, the other four by David King. I don't know anything about King except that he wrote a Western or two under his own name and also wrote at least one Slocum novel as "Jake Logan". I read all the paperbacks when they were new (bought 'em right off the spinner rack -- boy, I miss spinner racks sometimes!) and liked all of them. I've thought about rereading them to see how they hold up, but I have no idea where my copies are and haven't worked up the enthusiasm to search for them. There was also a Whitman juvenile novel based on the series by I.G. (Ivy) Edmonds that I wasn't aware of until I looked up the books on ABE. Edmonds is another author that's mostly a mystery to me. I know she wrote some stuff for the Girl From U.N.C.L.E. digest magazine and a few paperbacks, but that's it.