Flight of the Old Dog – Dale Brown

Summary: The USSR has developed an anti-satellite laser system, which they insist is purely for defensive purposes. All hell breaks loose when they start using the laser for offensive purposes, and it falls to a highly classified military unit to take on the might of the Soviet Bear.

 

Setting: Cold War USA and USSR

 

Plot: Patrick McLanahan is an award winning bombardier on B-52 bombers. He’s approached by the general in charge of Dreamland, a classified weapons testing facility in the Nevada desert, to help develop advanced weapons systems for the aging bomber.

At the same time, the USSR is completing work on a laser system which they assert is in compliance with existing treaties, since it’s only planned for defensive uses. Their deception catches up with them when they start using the laser to shoot down reconnaissance planes and satellites designed to provide launch detection capabilities over the Pacific Ocean.

 

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff puts together a strike package to take out the laser facility but the bombers are intercepted at their holding point, nullifying their capabilities. At the same time, a sneak attack on the Dreamland facility forces the General to take to the air in the modified B-52, and they turn out to be the only asset which has a chance against the laser facility.

 

Criticisms: Fairly technical. Military fiction might not be for all readers.

 

Wrap-up: This is it – the beginning of the McLanahan series. There are 16 books (thus far), and they’re all great books, but this book starts the whole series out with a bang. If you like military fiction, chances are you’ve already read this series cover to cover, but if you haven’t picked one up, you can’t go wrong with this one. This book is a bit dated (from the late 80’s), but it’s a gripping start to McLanahan’s journey; you get to follow him through most of his career, and he’s a very real character.

 

Dale Brown is the real deal; he flew on medium and heavy bombers, and knows his technical stuff cold. This gives him a solid technical base to start the rest of the series. A wonderful series!

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a B+.

Tripwire – Lee Child

Summary: A Reacher novel. If you need more of a summary than that, you're not familiar with him, and you need to be. Pick up a Reacher novel, then come back to this review.

Setting: Present day U.S.

Plot: Jack Reacher is contacted by a private investigator while working as a laborer in Key West. After the PI makes contact with him, he’s mysteriously killed (the PI, not Reacher). Who hired the PI? Reacher takes it upon himself to figure that out, as well as trying to figure out who took him out, and why they did it.

Turns out that Garber (Reacher’s old boss) was investigating a soldier who was MIA in Viet Nam and he evidently pissed off the wrong people. Reacher’s left to pick up the pieces, which he does in his standard spectacular fashion.

Criticisms: No technical criticisms.

Wrap-up: Reacher is a wonderful character, but to be honest, I need a break from him for a while. He’s a bad ass, and everything typically works out for him. That’s a bit tiring after a while. I think a bit of separation may bring back some of the enjoyment for me.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A-.

Gates of Fire – Steven Pressfield

Summary: The fictionalized historical account of one of two Spartans who survived the battle at Thermopylae, previously fictionalized in the movie “300”.

 

Setting: Ancient Greece.

 

Plot: I put the plot back in for this review. It’s worth it!

 

King Xerxes from Persia is taking over the world, and King Leonidas of the Spartans refuses to allow Xerxes’ forces to march in unopposed. He selects 300 warriors (and their squires) and leads them and their allies to make a stand at a natural choke point in northern Greece. Of those 300 warriors and their associated support personnel, there are 2 survivors. The narrator is one of them, commissioned by King Xerxes to tell the story of the Spartans.

 

The narrator tells the story from the point of view of one of the squires; essentially a helper to a knight and a punching bag for that knight as he goes through training. The story covers the squire’s journey from a sacked and abandoned village in northern Greece all the way to Sparta in southern Greece, and his assignment to different Spartan knights.

 

While the stories in the narration are quite entertaining (humorous, compelling, poignant and sometimes quite ghastly), the concepts that Pressfield presents are quite hard hitting, and force quite a bit of self-examination. The concepts of valor, honor, and duty are explored in great depth, and attempting to compare any values that you (the reader) hold dear against the values that the Spartan warriors (and their wives) lived by on a daily basis leaves you with a haunting feeling of inadequacy.

 

A bit of an example: The whole city knows that Leonidas will be calling up 300 knights to go face Xerxes. Only knights who have male descendants will be chosen – effectively, Leonidas is acknowledging that this is a suicide mission. The wife of one of the main characters conspires to save her nephew by claiming him as her own son, knowing full well that her husband (who’s fathered only daughters) will now be eligible to be called up. She knows that her husband’s sense of honor will be shattered if he’s not allowed to participate in the defense of their homeland. The king pulls her aside afterward and explains his reasoning for choosing only certain knights (including her husband) to participate:

 

“When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.

 

But who, lady, will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughter of the fallen.

 

If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief, they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing if as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all of Hellas will stand behind her.

 

Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.”

There’s a bit more of an explanation, she cries a bit, then declares:

“Those were the last tears of mine, my lord, that the sun will ever see.”

There are so many parts of this book that gave me the chills; it’s very rare to read such a strong story of valor, honor, and duty. Current era stories about the military (and some civilian stories too) highlight these same concepts, but for the most part, the protagonists in the current stories succeed against insurmountable odds, or know heading into a situation that there’s a chance that they won’t survive.

 

These soldiers knew for a fact that they would not be returning from the Hot Gates. Theirs was a suicide mission. Their goal in facing down Xerxes in this particular spot was twofold: to hurt him enough in this one battle that he would think twice about taking on all of Greece’s military might, and to set an example for the rest of Greece in the lengths that they should all be willing to go to to preserve their country and their way of life.

 

Contrary to the popular image, there were not only 300 men standing up to the Persian invasion. There were 300 Spartan knights, but some allies joined with them in this battle; true historical accounts differ, but there were between 7,000 and 10,000 defenders. Historical accounts differ as well on the number of troops the Persian king brought; anywhere from 250,000 to 2,000,000 troops are acceptable numbers within the context of the true story. There is also no hard evidence of how many casualties were suffered by the Persian troops. I have seen figures quoting as many as 50,000 casualties of this one battle on the Persian side alone.

 

Nearly universal though, are the number of Spartan deaths. Leonidas sent all of the remaining allies away at the end, and only the remaining Spartans of the original 300 (along with their remaining squires) and one ally (numbering around 200 troops) remained at the end. Historically, there may have been a handful of survivors from the final clash, but it’s universally agreed that none of the Spartan knights survived.

 

Criticisms: Quite gory at times.

 

Wrap-up: This is a very hard book to read. The language can be quite antiquated at times, but it really gives you a good feel for the time period. Some of the moral concepts brought up force what can be some painful introspection. Extremely gory at times. A very good book, but definitely not for everyone. If you can watch 300 without flinching at the amount of gore, and the time period interests you, I would highly recommend this book.

 

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book an A.

Up Country – Nelson Demille

Summary: Evidence of a 30 year old murder has recently come to light. There are a few catches, though: There was only one witness to that crime, and that witness may have died in the intervening years. The murder happened in the aftermath of a significant battle in Vietnam. The witness was a combatant for North Vietnam. How do you find the witness, if he lived through the rest of the war? How do you pick the investigator to assign? 

Paul Brenner, recovering from the aftermath of “The General’s Daughter” ; in truth he retired after that debacle. He’s called back to active duty and coerced to go back to Vietnam (for a third time), only this time during peacetime. Why can’t diplomatic requests be put through to talk with the witness? Is his government lying to him? What’s so important about the dead man, or the murderer?

Is there any way that Paul can make it back from Vietnam a third time, especially with the information he discovers while investigating this murder?

Setting: Vietnam, 1990’s – flashbacks to 1968 and 1972

Plot: Paul Brenner (last seen in “The General’s Daughter”) is contacted by his old boss and asked to take one last assignment. Next thing he knows, he’s on a plane to Nam, for the third time in his career. He’s got contacts he’s supposed to meet up with, who will give him information and assistance, as required. Before he even leaves the airport though, he catches the eye of Colonel Mang, a fairly powerful member of the Vietnam National Police Force, and in the course of the story, brazenly pisses Mang off and starts getting in trouble before his assignment even truly begins.

Once free, he has to find his way from the very bottom of the country to the very top, avoiding detection and questioning (by Mang’s men) the whole way. He’s “aided” in his journey by his first contact, an ex-pat who speaks Vietnamese, and a few additional people he meets along the way. What happens when he finds the witness? Will the witness even be alive? Based on the information the witness has, will Paul be able to tell what’s really going on?

Criticisms: This was a hard book for me to read, as I have a great deal of empathy for Vietnam vets. This book gives a glimpse into some of the experiences of a Army infantryman, surviving jungle warfare any way he can. The book can feel a bit ragged, but Demille was an established writer when this book came out, and I believe that the narrative style used in this book was chosen on purpose. Some readers might find the emotions that this book dredges up to be a bit strong. My next read will be much lighter, possibly a comic book, with pretty pitchures.

Wrap-up: Nelson Demille is one of my favorite writers. He’s a Vietnam Veteran, and this is one of only a couple of his books that touches on his experiences in the war. I would give this book an A++++++++, if such a grade existed in my arbitrary scale. I did, however, mark the final grade down a bit for subject matter. His work in technically perfect, no runs, no hits, no errors. I have read this book at least 10 times, and this last time through, I caught one single outright mistake. One. In this entire book. He should have caught it, his editors should have caught it, his proofers should have caught it, I’ve never caught a single bald-faced, point-blank mistake by Demille before, in any book, in any form or any fashion. That’s how good he is. As far as the attributes of the book itself? This is a book about a tortured soul, and his journey to peace and redemption. It’s set in a war zone; if you’re staunchly anti-war, this book will reinforce your beliefs, based on the accounts of some of the atrocities committed by both sides. If you support the troops no matter what, this book will make you weep for the pain that the characters go through almost reliving these times with them. I cannot recommend a book any higher than this one, if you can stomach a true fiction war novel.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this book a solid A.  I’ll save the elusive A+ for a book with more universal appeal.

High Crimes – Joseph Finder

Summary: Claire’s a law professor at Harvard, and everything’s going right for her. She’s got a beautiful daughter from a previous marriage, tenure, and she’s married to the man of her dreams. Or is she? Following a break-in at their house, her husband is chased down by the government and the military for a horrendous war crime he’s accused of committing 13 years earlier. Claire takes the reins and leads her husband’s defense team, trying to keep him alive and out of military prison.

Setting: United States, 1993 and flashbacks to Central America, 1985

Plot: Claire is a tenured professor at Harvard, a rising celebrity due to her involvement with a highly publicized case, and is happily married to a wonderful man. Her life starts falling apart around her when her husband is accused of war crimes in an undeclared war in Central America, and chased down by the FBI. She pursues a vigorous legal defense for him, taking on the military justice system in a bid to get down to the truth, or at least to keep her husband out of prison. Are those goals mutually exclusive?

Criticisms: No significant criticisms. The book is written about a pretty graphic series of events during an undeclared war. Most of the graphic events covered are described from a more narrative style, rather than from a gritty, realistic perspective.

Wrap-up: Finder does a good job of dumbing down some of the more technical concepts (regarding armaments, etc.), and while his courtroom scenes aren’t quite as polished as Grisham, he’s quite effective at capturing the courtroom drama. Most of his books are written more about the corporate world and corporate espionage, so this was a nice change-up, and nicely demonstrates his versatility as a writer.

Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I would give this book a B.